Council has amputated boiler flue. What are the alternatives?

[Mad_Trev]

This is the kind of thing that tends to happen in Spain, where I live.

The council came along to visit some work being down on the outside of the building containing my flat, saw several flue pipes sticking out, said that repair subsidies would not be forthcoming if they stayed, and ordered the workmen to chop them off forthwith and replace them with ventilation panels. This has had the unfortunate side effect that, while the building looks much prettier, the boilers affected have ceased to work.

The building committee is determined to persist with subsidies, and the council has said that we need to either move the current gas installations to the back of the building - which is completely unfeasible - or replace them with electric ones. Within 7 days.

Since the council is believed to be happy as long as it looks as if its edicts have been carried out, what we're looking for is a way of venting the boilers which achieves a flat-to-wall outside profile while allowing to-and-froing of air intake and exhaust in a way that will satisfy the gas company when they carry out their next inspection. Any ideas?

[Ian Stirling]

Most boilers have two means of fluing, either coaxial, or seperate piped. If you replace the flue with the seperate pipe option, and put the intake/outlet some 1m apart, behind the ventilation screens, with ducting to

[Rick]

Wait till the council go away and the put back whatever they took down.

Rick

[Andy]

What about prettying up the flue? Does the council allow chimneys? If so, you could perhaps put in a fake pot concealing the gas flue? What type of flue did you have? I take it you cannot modify the roof, thinking about it, since you have a flat, so you're limited to venting through the wall.. Are your flues balanced (coaxial ) or the older type? Would help if more info provided.

Andy.

[Dave Fawthrop]

| This is the kind of thing that tends to happen in Spain, where I live.

| Any | ideas?

Move back to the UK?

[T i m]

Bribe the Council? (It happens here as there's no other way some things could get past planning).

Offer to buy some equipment for the local school?

T i m

[Big Bill]

Or, move to Mexico.

BB

[Mad_Trev]

Thanks Andy and Ian Stirling for the response. Andy, you're correct, there are no roof options. The flue is coaxial and comes out of a Chaffoteaux & Maury boiler. I'll be able to get hold of more details later today.

Warm water sometimes comes on. I can't figure out a causal explanation for this, but suspect (speaking as a complete ignoramus) that it has something to do with airflows on the street side. I guess that we're somewhere on the border between it working and it not working. That's why one of the things I was interested in exploring was the possiblity of using a different vent. The one the workmen slapped on before taking down the scaffolding (4th floor flat...) is a tight grille, which I guess has roughly the effect of sticking a pigeon in the tube. One obvious solution would be to tear off the vent, but I suspect this would not go down well with the gas company, who are due shortly to give the installation a 4-yearly safety check.

To the rest of you: Yes, people here often do take receipt of the subsidies and then undo all the (aesthetic) improvements the council told them to make, putting the airco back on the balcony etc etc etc. Unfortunately the incredibly slow bureaucracy here means that subsidies take up to a year to be adjudicated, by which time the nifty Italian woman in the front room will probably have drawn her own conclusions. Mexico is unlikely to be better than Spain in this respect, and I believe it rains in the UK.

[Mad_Trev]

I think the model comes from this range

or from its equivalent 8 years ago. The layout and the flue arrangements look the same

[Mad_Trev]

has diagrams of the current range, which on p20 seems to suggest that the pipe be fitted flush with the exterior wall anyway. On our installation prior to the chop, they had it poking 50cm out of the wall with a little sombrero hung on the end

[one_turtle]

Disguise your flue as something built by Gaudi (a fish maybe)

[Richard Conway]

Speaking of which, did anyone see Challenge Tommy Walsh last week?

[Ed Sirett]

I've got a collection of bad gas fitting pictures from my holiday in Spain. Unfortunately none of them were quite as bad as what you say has happened here.

If what happened to you happened here there would be a something of a stir as the HSE and/or CORGI dragged the council through the courts.

I would expect that the boilers stop when the flames die due to lack of oxygen. In any case even if they half work the likelihood is that they will be rapidly sooting up. If there is any possibility of the flue gasses getting back into the building then there is a real hazard.

[Andy]

I think you may have answered your own question here. I have no idea why it would stick 50cm out from the wall, if a normal coaxial flue, and though I haven't looked at the pdf file, I suspect it will show a streamlined looking cowl poking no more than 10cm out of the wall, if that. It may be possible to mount it completely flush with the wall, especially if you flare the opening in the masonry slightly. You need to examine the regs for the positioning of flues, there may well be one in the pdf files on the chaffoteaux website. I agree with the other posters, what the council has done is verging on criminal damage, and if they have crimped the end of the flue together when they cut it, they are endangering life and limb. Still, that's why we have the term 'Spanish Practices', eh?! Let us know what happens,

Andy.

[Mad_Trev]

Andy, thanks very much for your help. I looked on the previous page of the installation booklet and they seem to want the exterior flue tube to protrude slightly from the outside wall and then the interior flue tube to protrude from the exterior. Your suggestion of recessing the whole caboodle makes sense to me (speaking as a fairly dazed novice) and then perhaps banging a highly permeable vent on the outside to satisfy the grille fetishists at city hall. I've taken the liberty of drawing a picture (sorry, it's a stoopid BMP) of what I think it would look like:

legal angle is being pursued, although our man seems to have fled his wife and taken refuge somewhere out in wine country. I believe this is also a Spanish Practice.

[fred]

In article , Mad_Trev writes

into trouble with the exhaust air not dispersing properly and recirculating back into the inlet which would upset the boiler's operation.

Try a bit of parallel thinking, the exhaust flue (in the middle) sticks out furthest to separate the inlet a & exhaust gasses, ok if that can't be done, think about separating them another way, fabricate (or have fabricated) a collar that will allow the exhaust pipe to stuck through but will cause the inlet gasses to be drawn from the side, attach a short duct to this to draw inlet gas from say a foot away from the exhaust. Then recess both inlet & exhaust behind separate grilles. Note that such a collar/arrangement is in common use with many boilers to convert concentric to separate flues, even if they are not available for your boiler you may be able to source one for another boiler to use as a starting point.

[Mad_Trev]

Thanks Fred, that's a very good one and may yet come in handy if the next para doesn't work out

More developments on the political front. The council's senior bureaucrat was ambushed yesterday after lunch, denies all responsibility, recognises the need to leave modest flues on some old buildings (no sombrero ban either) because of difficulties of alternative solutions etc, conclusions: it's all the builder's fault. So the silly bastards may have to abseil down the building and reinstall the flues. Do you think I could turn this into a telly series?