The tank should not have collapsed at that temperature. The things would fall apart as you handled them! B-)
Blame culture/media... This was a genuine accident IMHO, one waiting to happen maybe but still a genuine accident.
We had exactly the same behind a Parkray coke burner in Yorkshire. The hot water was "free" so it was just got run down the drain when it started boiling.
MBQ
It'd also decrease by maybe an order of magnitude the heat input required (over time) to get it to 100C.
What about when you don't have a roof. Or more precisely, there's someone else's flat between you and the roof? The wife was asking me about this incident too; quite confused she was. But she's barely got used to this strange idea of only delivering cold water to houses and I had to explain to her about putting water tanks into roof spaces ("what's a roof space? There's no room") and using floorboards and plasterboard between levels of a building ("on top of and hanging below the concrete plate?") At least I'm pretty confident that the only person likely to be hurt in such an incident in our house would be the man sitting in the airing cupboard next to the water cylinder.
I had a variant of this happen. The immersion heater is a two element type with power going to either a short or long element via a switch labelled Sink/Bath. Thus you can heat just the top part of the cylinder or nearly the whole thing. There is also a master switch.
There is only one thermostat and it is in the common neutral so that it will cut off either of the two elements.
I was woken up by the water boiling. I switched it all off. In the morning I was perplexed since the thermostat seemed OK when I slid it out..
The problem was caused by a hairline crack in one of the elements near where it left the water. There had been an electrical leakage to earth on the neutral side which effectively bypassed the 'stat. It hadn't blown the fuse since the power was going thru' the element before "disappearing sideways".
It was an older holiday property overseas with no CBs, just screw-in ceramic fuses. Also the water was extremely soft almost acidic.
New double element installed which is resistant to the aggressive water plus a full makeover of the consumer unit.
In article , Dave Liquorice writes
It's in many other news reports, a random example:
You're going to be sadly misinformed if you rely on the BBC as your sole provider of news.
Reports also said that the parents were sleeping on the ground floor, the family having moved into the house that day, so they may have not heard any unusual noises in the loft. However, reports also state that the cylinder was on the ground floor, where the parents were sleeping, so why they didn't hear the noises from the cylinder and act on them, who knows?
In article , The Natural Philosopher writes
It was plastic. TV news tonight showed the deformed and split tank.
You take the pipe up through the flat above, along with the pipes coming down from the communal cold tank.
Owain
On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 10:12:54 -0800 (PST) someone who may be naffer wrote this:-
In the UK there would be a thermostat for each element. This is intended to be placed in the supply, though some bodger could put it in the neutral.
On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 18:31:46 +0000 someone who may be Mike Tomlinson wrote this:-
And also said that it was designed to take water at 100C, though only if it was properly supported at the base.
On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:53:14 +0000 someone who may be Owain wrote this:-
I have seen such pipes emerging from the wall of flats. They bend up a bit and then over.
FYI H&S bulletin issued in reponse to the accident:
bedrooms. This is most likely in houses built between 1945 and 1975. Very often these homes have or used to have a back boiler. If the cylinder is located in a bedroom it is probable that the cistern may be directly above it. "
I think that a tank is likely to be over a bedroom, as that's typically what the largest part of the upstairs floorspace is dedicated to in most houses.
"the base of the cistern should be fully supported over its whole area by a durable, rigid, flat and level platform?? Replacing a base support is not a straightforward task and should be done by a competent person such as a qualified plumber. "
I wonder how many plumbers know how to safely construct a base with sufficient structural stability and necessary support from the building structure to hold a 50 gallon tank safely in a loft, such as how many roof trusses it has to be spread across? As I was reading that sentence, I was expecting it was going to refer you to a carpenter or structural engineer at the end.
The other thing I saw on the TV which made me smile was an interview with a plumber. He was holding a new immersion heater thermometer and saying this could all be avoided for the sake of £5. That's quite impressive if he was offering to fit one for £5. Given that this was Pimlico Plumbers, who aren't know for being at the cheaper end of the market, I thought that was doubly funny.
I read it as simply needing a sheet of suitable ply under the tank. Which is common sense really.
Whoever plumbed this place (presumably the council when it was a council flat) only put one pipe up through my property into the neighbour upstairs - the gas pipe. The cold water tank is just above head height in the airing cupboard and holds a stunning 40 litres ... oh hang on, that's a header tank for the radiators. So the only tankage at all is the immersion heater tank and the integral tank above it. Which being copper (or steel plated with copper ... not magnetic though) means that it's not a problem.
To cascade scalding water over innocent passers by? Or can you put a ned-trap underneath them and kill off a few of the bastards? Hmmm ... ned-trap ... hmmm ... got 50p coin ... got superglue .. got pavement ... got hours of cheap entertainment. Even better is the ned over the road with the air rifle. Does setting off ned-on-ned violence score double points?
Ned... A local term?
On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:24:59 GMT someone who may be Aidan Karley wrote this:-
No more than pipes from pressure relief valves. When they bend over they are made to discharge against the wall.
Interesting idea. I must ponder on how one could make it detect neds but avoid it operating for innocent passers by.
The message from Andy Hall contains these words:
No. It stands for "Non-Educable Delinquent"
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