This is not spam :)
On Friday night my Vaillant Ecomax 828/2E boiler (fitted June 2003) sprang a leak and drenched the whole bathroom and kitchen underneath. The cost of repairs is going to be considerable.
The boiler engineer came out Saturday and established the leak as a fault or error as part of the manufacturing/assembling process. Inside these modern boilers a lot of pipework is held together by spring clips which sit in grooves and hold the copper piping - complete with rubber O-ring - in place and sealed.
Well that is the theory. My main water feed to the boiler which will be the first bit of pipework with these spring-clip connections came apart and leaked. There is mains pressure in this pipework but fortunately for me the pipe did not completely detach.
The cause of the problem, according to my installer, was that the spring clip was NOT firmly and correctly seated in place and he went on to say the the top bit of the clip (shaped like a horizontal "U") was in its groove but the bottom part of the clip was not. Over time and with boiler use - temperature changes, pressure fluctuations, humidity, vibration, etc, the clip has failed to retain fully the copper pipe inside its fitting among the boiler components and started leaking (pouring in my case).
This is part of the boiler that installers should not touch or interfere with during the installation process as they are "ready to go". It is also highly unlikely that these clips could come loose during any transportation once they have left the factory. Which leaves an error on the production line - i.e the clip was not fitted properly by someone in the factory. This makes Vailllant liable I guess.
The reason these clips are fitted I am told is to make things quicker to change over should components in your boiler fail. There are no compression joints or soldered joints to mess about with, just pull a couple of clips and replace the bad component. I personally don't like this. Had I known that my water mains pressure was being held in by a clip on a pipe I would not have gone down the Ecomax route.
There could also be design faults with these boilers and how the pipe retention clips are used/made but I haven't heard about design problems from Vaillant yet. Anyway my water poured all over my circuit board although the installer dried it out with a hairdryer and got it working again. The Vaillant engineer is coming on Tuesday and I will speak to him then about potential design defects (and compensation).
If my installer is adamant he did not partly dislodge this clip and Vaillant say there clip was firmly seated in place on the production line then a design fault becomes more alarming and probable.
I urge you all to check your component parts inside the boiler and check all these spring clips (there are several) to make sure they are firmly seated top and bottom in their grooves. And if anyone else has had problems of this nature pleas let me know.
Regards,
~Carl