Council plumbing story ...

I came across this on an internal forum on our local council's web site.

I translate it as "I can't be bothered to fix it but here's a 'bullshit baffles brains' excuse that you will swallow hook, line and sinker ..."

... see if you agree ...

"During one of the Water Audits in (name of building) a dripping tap was reported to building maintenance. Apparantly (sic) the tap is working fine and maintenance informed us that some taps are meant to drip to vent the boiler if needed."

So, what pressure is the safety valve set to? Ah! Do I sense another bodge here?

Or could it really be a plausible excuse? If so, convince me!

Reply to
Terry Casey
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Yes, plauisble. There are local stored hot water heaters which use a tap which looks pretty ordinary from the top, but under the sink you will see the valve controls the inlet to the heater and the spout comes from the outlet - it's the vent because the heater is not for pressurised use, and it drips as the water in the heater heats and expands. The other giveaway is if you turn the tap off quickly, the flow slows and stops more gradually than if the valve was controlling the spout directly.

IME, the washers in these die quickly because people turn them off tighter to stop the drip, which doesn't work, but knackers the washer very quickly. We had them in one office, and maintenance put notices above them explaining that the tap was expected to drip, and not to turn the tap off hard in an effort to stop it.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

Yes, it could well be genuine.

There are some instant-heat water heaters, commonly found in offices, where the control valve is on the cold side and the "tap" is just an uncontrolled spout. This also acts as a vent, so it mustn't be stoppered.

If the heater is cold and the spout isn't running, then the water is heated and expands, then they'll spill the excess. So long as the stop afterwards (i.e. it isn't the control valve actually leaking continuously) then this is OK.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

We had one of those decades ago (well, my grandmother did). She called a plumber because the washer was indeed knackered (continuous flow).

He came, obviously thought he knew better, and put a 'proper' tap on the outlet of the heater, taking the top off the other one! I said I wasn't happy but he knew best.

He was still writing up his job sheet in his van when I went out to him and invited him to return and observe the water squirting from joints under the sink.

Reply to
Bob Eager

'bullshit

working

Wel there's a farm near here where I keep some pigs, and the tap in the yard (fed by mdpe) always has a slight drip. Over the horrendous cold spell we had when it was freezing for days, that tap never froze, I presume as the water in the exposed bit of the pipe was continually replaced by marginally warmer water from underground. So drips have their uses!

AWEM

Reply to
Andrew Mawson

As others have said, undersink water heater. When you turn the tap on cold water flows into the bottom of the heater pushing hot water out of the tap. As the water heats up it expands & drips out of the tap. They are called vented taps & piggin expensive

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- and a bugger to fit sometimes.

Reply to
The Medway Handyman

Thank you all for your replies. I've never (knowingly) come across one of these although, of course, I've come across the over sink variety where the arrangement is obvious.

I'd assumed that the building would have a conventional hot water system

- it appears I was probably wrong!

I encountered the original post because of our local council's incompetence in allowing its private, internal forums to be viewed by anyone - it was an automatic reaction to tar all the council departments with the same brush!

On the other hand, the competence of several of our council's departments has been seriously questioned by much greater minds than me on a number of occasions ...!

... It's just that we don't usually have the opportunity to see what goes on from the inside ...

Reply to
Terry Casey

It simply requires a tap whose control is more compatible with its function.

Using a standard turn-to-close control is not logical because the visual feedback of a drip indicates it is not sufficiently closed so people WILL try to close it further from lifelong tap operation expectation & conditioning.

It might be better to use a push-down self-closing trigger tap, where the user has no means with which to attempt to stop it dripping, and the trigger boss could be engraved "drip after use is normal HW pressure relief".

Um... do not think further council conditioned box ticking? :-)

Reply to
js.b1

How long does Google take to tell us which Council

(45 seconds)

Reply to
nimbusjunk

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember " snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.co.uk" saying something like:

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Reply to
Grimly Curmudgeon

What he said. I put a notice on our office heater after the plumber - who'd fixed it - explained to me how they worked. He assured me the drip would stop once the water had achieved the correct temperature -- and it did. He also said that the washers get knacked because people see the tap dripping and give it another tweak.

The missing link here was between the experts (our institution's in-house plumbers) and the users (who needed an explanation so that the thing worked properly). In any big institution (especially councils) the craftsmen are required to respond to bits of paper, and just go do the job; they often don't see the actual users; even more rare is any interaction between the tradesman and the customer in these instances (and often, office workers look down on tradesmen, and don't speak to them).

I'd submit that the percentage of good tradesmen in councils, and other large institutions, is at least as great as in the wider world.

John

Reply to
Another John

Another John wrote: SNIP

Nail, hit, head!

Reply to
The Medway Handyman

My electric water heater has what the plumbers call a "matched pair" - a very strange name. This is actually a pair of pressure reducing valves, one on the input and one going to a pipe to the outside. Water drips from the outside pipe when the cold water heats up. So there are no dripping taps. Surely this is a better way to solve the problem?

Reply to
Matty F

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