Repaired boiler PCBs - invalid insurance?

[Lobster]

Recently had to have my dead boiler repaired. and was set to have the main PCB replaced with a (self-sourced) reconditioned one rather than a brand new one at an eye-watering price.

In the end the problem turned out to be something else; however my point in posting is that the engineer tried to warn me off using the reconditioned part because he says that he's heard of somebody having had a house fire caused by one, followed by the resulting insurance claim being turned down due to the boiler not having been properly repaired by a standard manufacturer-supplied part.

A fire is plausible I suppose, but as to the last bit I smell bullshit. Could it be any way legit for an insurer to reject a claim on the above basis (unless presumably they had highly specific and restrictive small print in their policy wording?)

[nospam]

Errr, how would the insurance company know? You are right to smell BS.

[newshound]

Pretty hard to see how a boiler PCB failure could cause a serious fire, too.

[Peter Parry]

Probably the safest place to start an unintended fire in a house would inside a boiler. Other than in the combustion chamber they have very little which will burn and a steel case to contain anything which could. A PCB failure, no matter how catastrophic, would not cause anything more than smoke and sparks.

Standard scaremongering by boiler fitters (they are not engineers) . From a purely practical point of view there is very little visible difference between a "new" and refurbished part and certainly none after either had been in a fire. It is highly improbable that the insurer would know the part was refurbished or would care. Fires are not inspected that closely unless there is obvious evidence of arson.

No, insurance contracts used to be "contracts of utmost good faith", the purchaser had to tell the insurance company anything the insurer might consider to be relevant (but the insurer didn't have to say what they might consider to be relevant). This created significant problems as insurers would try to use non disclosure of unrelated factors to cancel policies after claims were made.

This changed in the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012, which came into force in April 2013.

This replaced the traditional principle of utmost good faith in consumer insurance contracts with a duty by the consumer to take reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation to the insurer. Basically the insurer now has to ask specific questions and the consumer has to answer them honesty but they no longer have a general duty to try to guess what the insurer wanted. An insurer cannot void the insurance contract because they were not told something they didn't ask about.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Most 'reconditioned' PCBs are repaired originals. So the fire could just as likely caused by poor initial design/manufacture of the PCB than any repair.

And just how would the insurer know a 'non maker part' had been fitted?

It's just a typical case of an unscrupulous 'engineer' spreading scare stories to bump up his profits.

[Brian Gaff]

I'd just not mention it and assume it was fine. After all all the pcbs have to be the same whether repaired or new, if the circuit was dangerous then the device would be dangerous no matter what pcb was in it. Brian

[Mark]

Ask Geoff CET but as far as im aware nobody makes pattern boiler PCBs they are all repaired OEM boards using excitedly the same parts, so impossible for any insurance inspection to notice, even in the unlikely event they wanted to

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[Dave Plowman (News)]

ISTR Geoff, who owns a company which repairs such things, saying that over a period of time you get to know what things fail on a particular make, but is not allowed to improve the design by using uprated parts. It has to be repaired like for like.

[ARW]

That is exactly what he said.

[newshound]

Actually the definition of "like for like" is not so straightforward. To take a slightly silly example for convenience, you can get an unbranded

13A socket from B&Q to a given BS, or you can get an MK one meeting the same BS. We all *know* that the MK one is likely to be better made. So if the OEM uses unbranded, but Geoff uses MK he is actually making an expert judgement being made that he has met the "like for like" criterion, and has improved on the original. If it went to court, I am sure he would not have much difficulty finding an FIEE to support his decision, and no insurance company would in practice ever try to fight it.

In my industry (nuclear power) it is frequently necessary, when a piece of now obsolete hardware is being replaced, to obtain a statement from a professional engineer that the replacement is "like for like" to avoid having to go back through all the system proving tests which might have been carried out decades ago.

There is always an element of risk in such exercises. For example, going back to 13 amp sockets, irrespective of the BS requirements the flashover voltage of a B&Q socket *might* be greater than the MK one. So, if the fault case involved overvoltage then the B&Q socket might actually be better than the MK even though they both meet the same BS. But by using a chartered engineer to review the case, you should normally go past the "box ticking" stage and confirm whether the correct selection criteria are being used.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Things sharing the same BS number can hardly be described as 'uprating'. I'd also dispute that MK always produces a better product than others.

Uprating would be changing, say, a 5 amp relay known to give problems for perhaps a 10 amp one. That sort of thing. Which might even involve producing a new PCB.