And my boiler's broken…
October 27th, 2009 | Filed under Personal.
Leaking boiler
What you’re looking at is the underside of my central heating boiler. The crusty white stuff on that pipe is limescale caused by the water in this area. The crusty white stuff shouldn’t be there, it means that pipe has a leak, and is probably partially responsible for my heating system having no water pressure.
I tried filling the radiators back up, but as soon as I started the boiler a fairly fast dripping noise came out the bottom of the boiler. A quick look with my torch showed not one, not two but four leaks on this boiler!
Here’s two of the leaks on the plumbing going to the rest of the house. And in this photo are two more leaks. One is on the pressure relief valve, the other is coming from the back, just above the copper pipe in the background.
Since this is a rented house I’ve just phoned the letting agency who are going to have a plumber call me back. Fortunately the boiler is in my kitchen with all the pipework exposed so I can see and hear this stuff happening. If it was locked away in a cupboard I’d probably never notice.
And no, this isn’t the first time I’ve run the boiler since last winter. I made the point of running it for a few hours each month and it was fine at the weekend when I used it.
Tags: boiler, central heating, House, leak, water
Soldered joints as well, that’s going to take a bit of effort to sort out. If it was a compression fitting (and my house) I’d fix it myself. They’re easy to change.
Every year I have a gas safety inspection to check I’m not going to drop dead from CO poisoning (or, presumably, to remove my corpse if I already have). And every year the the heating engineer looks at the boiler and mutters things about cheap cowboys.
Hopefully repairing this will involve removing the boiler from the wall and putting a new one in its place.