Professional Property Maintenance

Skew-Whiff Pipework By Pretzel Man

DANGER OF THE WEEK AWARD

Cowboy Gas Fitters

While working on a house next door I spotted this masterpiece of crappy plumbing. Back in 1970 this would have sold as modern art! So for fun let’s follow the flow of water from this condensing boiler through to the main waste pipe.

Condensing boiler, as a by-product of squeezing extra heat from the same volume of gas that would be wasted in a ‘normal’ boiler produce condensation within the boiler. Some of that moisture can be seen in the pluming (the long trail of what looks like steam coming from the flue) and some of the moisture trickles back into the boiler and must be removed or the boiler would drown in it’s own waste!

The waste is gathered in various ways depending on the manufacturer but in most cases flows down into the boiler and out through a 21.5mm overflow pipe. The rules how to pipe up condensation pipe work are well  published so there should be no misconception as to how to do it. In the case of our Cowboy Of The Week Award winner several issues can be seen without having to look closely.

1. The 21.5 condensate pipe is too small for running outside and may cause the condensate to freeze on a cold day, thus blocking the pipe work, thus causing the condensate waste to back up, thus causing the the boiler to shut itself off when the sensor trips, or cause the flooring and walls to get wet when the pipe work leaks.
2. Not enough clips (only one actually!) on the 32mm waste pipe to keep it from bowing in the middle which will cause the water to settle in to the low area between to high areas very much like a lake. The added weight of the water will also cause the pipe to bow even more thus causing further problems such as leaks or the push fit pipes pulling completely out of the fittings. The clips in this case should be spaced out to one per metre of pipe work.
3. The angle of the pipe work should be set using the 90/25 rule. That’s 25mm of fall per 90mm of horizontal run. That’s the building regulation view on the subject.
4. As the pretzeled pipe wraps around the house the pipe work then starts it’s uphill run of about eight inches to end up dribbling down the side of the wall because the pipe didn’t actually run into the trough any more.

So the water flows from the boiler to the outside of the house into unclipped push fit 21.5mm waste pipe with TWO elbows, dribbles loosely into a 32mm elbow which then runs approximately 16 inches downhill from start to finish through an unclipped waste pipe which has bent under its own weight, the flow then turns 90 degrees and flows UPHILL about 8 inches and then dribbles down the wall.

WOW! The safe bet here is that this boiler was installed by a non-CORGI registered cowboy or home owner or a mate who also did the same type of quality work on the electrics and gas as well. Scary!