Whilst working in customers houses, More often than not You can see where the shower or a shower servicing a bath,  is located in the room above by the Brown stains on the ceiling.

A good percentage of calls made to water leaks,  are found not to be leaks on plumbing pipes but leakage due to faults in the tiling, or the  construction of  the walls where water is discharged during a shower.

Victorian & Edwardian houses move and walls flex and move, this  causes the grout joints in tiling to fracture.These hairline fractures coupled with atmospheric pressure, capillary action and gravity allow the water running down the wall, to travel behind the tiles. when the shower is being used.

This problem has  been around for a long time  and one of the reasons I do not install bathrooms.I personally think that all bathrooms shower room floors should be tanked(waterproofed) and contain an outlet pipe to discharge to a suitable drainage point.

I believe  some of the old school knowledgeable builders now insist that tanking is  undertaken before  installing a Bathroom.

More Homework

I Have a daughter in year four primary school (London UK).
The school is well stocked with computers and she seems to have adequate access to them during her school day.
I am well aware of the propriety operating system and office software used in schools, but that’s another subject.

But she arrived  home a couple of weeks ago, with a homework project that indicated, the  needed for the use of a proprietary drawing package.
Whilst my daughter is in school hours I am aware that she will use the software provided I have no problem with that.
At home she has access to variety of computers, All but one (my partners  office computer Windows 7), The rest run open source software (Linux Fedora).

My Daughter has access to a variety of drawing packages Libre Office Draw, Gimp, Inkscape, Karbon14, tux paint, Xara LX, Blender etc.
every program cost £0.00

All the above programs are completely free, world class, quality programs and available for Linux, Macs, and Windows.
She is able with these programs to complete, a comparable or even better finish to her project than the suggested product.

There are in the UK, many parents with limited resources, who are under the impression that their child/children, need to have the schools favourite propriety office suite.
They will buy a copy, in the belief their child cannot do their school work at home without it.

My advice would be to check out Libre Office Suite,

In my opinion the IT education in this country, is run by a generation of administrators, who never used computers as children,
I believe They do not have the vision that’s needed, to enable a current 8 year old cope with the demands of the world 10-15 years into their future.

Sir Ken Robinson has an interesting view on this subject check out this link.

Seven billion people on this earth announced this week.
The UK population represents less than 1% of that figure.
My point is:-
A computer is a tool, not a magical mystical box,
It’s possible for our kids to create and tailor their own individual operating system,with the marvellous open source libraries, available free to all of us.They can and will in some circumstances create applications, that will look magical, to the generations who preceded them.
I believe programming is a skill. that is an essential requirement for all our children in future whatever they do in their life.
Armed with this skill, it will enable them to shape or demand, the type of hardware they need for the future and dictate how they want things work.

You don’t need a degree to write applications, I am not a superstar or whiz-kid at computers, but I use software languages and libraries made available free to all, created by the real superstars and whiz-kids creating amazing software under GPL licenses.

All the software I use for the company business to build custom Applications, for the  business office servers and  phone (Android) applications, is listed below  and they are mainly cross platform available on every operating system. Linux, Mac, BSD, Unix Or Windows.

• Ruby
•  Python,
•  Nodejs(JavaScript)
•  PHP . All these languages have built in web servers like ruby-on-rails.

Databases:-

• Relational databases like

• Mysql
• Postgres

•  nosql key-value stores like

• Mongodb
• Crouchdb
• Redis

All the above software is accessible though a normal web Browser (user interface) Like

• Firefox,
• Chrome
• Opera,
• Safari
• Explorer.

If I ever have a software problem with an app ,there is always a person on the Internet that has the answer (if you ask nicely). sometimes results come within an hour of posting a request.

My child will be given these skills, will Yours?

This country’s  skills, are our future according to our Prime Minister,
Please give the Kids the right tuition & tools Prime Minister.

That’s my one in seven billion rant, will it make a difference?

What do I know I’m only a Heating Engineer !

With a 1 in 7000,000,000 opinion.

Condensing boilers have a by product of water as a result of combustion, which has to be channelled to the drainage system, If the water cannot drain from the boiler the boiler fills with water and stops. Another problem with this  water, is it is acidic and can only be handled by plastic  not metal pipes.

Last December during that severe cold snap,  many boiler condensate pipes, that had been fitted externally, Froze up causing the water to back up, into the boiler and lock out the ignition.This kind of defeats the object.  You need a boiler to work when the weather is  cold outside, and not to auto cut-out when it falls below freezing outside .

Last week I attended Two condensate pipe problems

• I do not install to many boilers now days , I leave that to the younger engineers. but I had a call from a customer, where 2 months before, I had Installed a new vaillant eco 824  ,
•  ”My new boilers Not working ! “.  was the cry for help                                                     
  
• Fortunately I was able to respond quickly In the Knowledge that the boiler had plenty of warranty left and it was the manufactures problem. But at the same time I felt quite sheepish, after convincing my customer, what a wonderful boiler it was.  
• On arriving at the job, the boiler was found to be locked out, This was due to a blockage in the new condensate pipe, I had installed this 2 months earlier as part of the boiler installation, and as a result, the boiler had stopped  working. The Pipe was only short, 2 meters long and terminated  with a vertical fall into the sink waste. After spending some time checking the waste and finding no blockage. The customer advised me the sink had got blocked  the weekend by beef dripping being discharged into it. 
• The sink waste pipe was cleaned at the time, but the fat had backed up the condensate pipe and solidified creating a 150mm Dripping plug.
•  Job Done. My faith in the boiler restored.

• The next  job was for an existing customer, Who I had not called me for a couple of years. The family had bought a new property in the meantime and their heating system was relatively new.
• The boiler was not working, but I could not call until the next day as they had drainage workers on site They didn’t say why.
•  When I finally inspected the boiler I found the same scenario boiler full of water Locked out. due to a blocked condensate pipe. But this time the pipe was blocked solid with sewerage all the way to the siphon reservoir inside the boiler.
• It Was necessary to rerun the condensate pipe to enable use temporary.
• The original supply had been run along the outside wall. with no insulation installed, it was a candidate for winter freezing.
  

  Not My Favourite Job Mickyboy

  It also had terminated into a cast-iron sewage stack pipe, The sewage pipe had become blocked and forced sewerage to back up 2.5 meters of pipe to the boiler.

• The two points to make here are
  • The condensate pipe was not lagged on an outside wall.
  • The pipe was terminated into a metal stack subjecting it to acid erosion. There are acid neutralisers on the market. Which would have rendered the acid neutral. but one was not fitted.
  • I have seen the results of condensate pipes run in copper pipe, the pipe soon becomes none existent.

  :-

  The moral of the story is don’t put your beef dripping or baby wipes into the sewerage system , because you may end up in the cold, have to call a boiler engineer and have to call a Drainage Company .

Winter is definitely Arriving later over the last 3 decades. I can remember The 1980′s when I was in charge of a heating company we had to top up the workforce, from the beginning of September, to cope with the Annual Mad Rush the second week in September.

During 1980′s combi boilers were just coming into the country, with Manufactures like Vaillant, Saunier-Duval, Vokera.                                                                                                Most heating systems then, consisted of conventional systems With stored hot water, the boilers being from companies like Potterton, Ideal, Gloworm, Thorn – Myson and Baxi.

It was a time when heating systems were simple and  problems were predictable, I would stock up with pumps zone valves  and thermocouples. All pumps were the same dimensions, zone/diverter valves were either Honeywell or Satchwell and thermocouples were universal  so it was not a problem to have van stock to meet most heating problem needs. Now you would need an articulated lorry, to carry stock to handle any repair situation.

Combi boilers now seem to dominate the market in London, and dictate the spares market where all the controls are within the boiler and usually cost double the external equivalent.

An observation I have made is that, the words Combi  and Condensing,  confuse the general public, many do not understand the difference. I’m sure a lot of people have been sold  a Combi when what they really wanted, was a replacement condensing boiler .After many years of using  stored water, they find themselves disappointed with the volume and bath filling times.

Personally at home, I have  taken out my combi, seriously upgraded the building insulation and installed a small range rated condensing boiler (6kw in the summer 12kw in the winter)  and a Pressurised  Hot water storage tank,  external pump and  controls.

Pros

• Proper hot water volume (no more family rows over your partner turning on the hot tap elsewhere, when your in the shower.)
• Immersion heater backup if boiler fails or as a summer heat source.
• Cheaper controls.

Cons

• Stored hot water must meet demand or family rows develop over who gets in the shower first in the morning, a quick recovery tank is a must have.

I think I can hear the telephone  ringing,  does it mean more pressure to add to the workload,  or perhaps its home calling, asking  me when I’m coming home.                          Looking forward to next March, When life becomes manageable again.

It occurred to me that I have been servicing  the unit since 2002, the boiler works well and has never failed or needed parts in all that time.

I have found since working on the original eurocombi in the late 1990′s,that Ariston boiler and Unvented Hot Water (primo) products, are reliable simple and easy to repair, the only time I have had problems have been, where a boiler was badly installed on black oxide filled systems, or damaged by inexperienced engineers . You can hardly blame the manufacturer for that. All manufactures suffer unfairly from these types of problems.

Ariston’s only failing in the past in my opinion, was on the availability of spares in the UK. London is fairly well served for boiler spares where I can obtain most Baxi, Ideal, Vaillant, Gloworm, Biasi, Potterton, Main, Viessmann, etc , within 1 Hour.

But with Ariston, parts have only been available by mail order normally 2days, a few years ago,  I had to to wait 10  days once for  Ariston spares , no fun for the customer, in mid winter. Im not sure what the parts situation is now.

If all Ariston boilers are as good as the one I have just serviced,perhaps they do not sell many spares ?

According to Ariston Their Current Genus HE   has a 5 Year Guarantee quiet a good deal. I have not installed one, but have seen one opened up on an Ariston promotion. it seem fine, to a trained eye and a reasonable  price .

On a service call today I came across a Vaillant combi Boiler Installed in 1981. It was a (sin 18) I Believe the original UK combi.
The only fault found on this appliance was a new pressure tank was needed
I think this boiler can be classed as an all time great. As Long as these boilers were installed correctly on a clean system they have stood the test of time.
Unfortunately the parts if available and the repair labour costs, would result in  an expensive repair

A temporary fix would be to install a secondary pressure vessel, Into the heating system but if other parts go wrong, a new boiler would be required.

The customer is 87 and takes a chance by having the external expansion tank in the hope that the boiler will last longer than the customer.
The customer looks pretty fit to me, but so does the boiler.

As it happens, I am also old and still working.

On a service call recently A customer ask me to install a new larger Radiator in the downstairs Front room as the room was too cold in the winter.

Looking at the current radiator, I thought it should have been adequate.

The reason the room was cold was the following.

1. The bare wooden floor boards had air gaps between them allowing the cold air to enter the room via external air bricks,  if you added the Area of the air gaps, it would have amounted the equivalent of  a 300mm square hole in the floor.
2. The room had two old coal fire places with unrestricted brick flues allowing any heat to disappear up the flue at an alarming rate.
3. The windows were standard draughty original sash bay windows at either end

I think I'll put another jumper on

Since North sea gas came on line in the 1960′s the UK has been used to cheap fuel, resulting in the UK believing the answer to being cold is throw more heat at The” I’m cold” problem. But our natural gas reserves have been depleted by this concept .

My answer to the customer was, “yes  I can fit a new radiator if that is what you want. But if you solve the 3 heat loss problems you will not need a new radiator and save money on your fuel bills.”

The customers reply was to fit a new larger radiator, and justified it by suggesting the existing radiator was not as nice looking as the new one.

The outcome was the customer got what they wanted (Is the customer is always right?)

When it comes to a design v practical common sense , Design always wins in this area of North London.

My answer would be to install more insulation, to cut down on London’s +2C degree difference to the surrounding  countryside temperature.

 

 

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