Okay, for reasons that it may be amusing to go into later, I have two, used, DHW Pressure Differential Valve assemblies carefully laid out on my kitchen work surface and neither of them seem to contain the little "O" ring which came with the replacement diaphragm kit.
Could someone tell me where to put the little "O" ring (yes, yes, I've heard that one before....) or should I just ignore it like the others before me obviously have?
Many thanks!
Nick
Maybe?????
Thank you, Alan!
Nick
Don't forget to see if the old one is still stuck down the hole :)
The good news: it all came apart and went back together and there are no more leaks.
Before I did this, the hot water AND the central heating both worked normally - the only problem had been a water leak from the DHW (front) pin gland. The only faulty part turned out to have been the gland nut surrounding the DHW pin which had broken. Yes broken. The whole diverter valve assembly had been put in by a gas engineer about five years ago - could the part have been faulty at that time?
The other good news is that the DHW is working and appears to be working normally.
The bad news is that the CH no longer works. The pin from the CH diverter valve rises up, contacts with the microswitch and then there is a click and it sinks back down again. It then tries to do the same thing over and over again.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Nick
Okay, well, everything is working properly again this morning so there's no problem to solve anymore. Phew....
Thanks again,
Nick
Air in the system?
I don't know how I would test for that but it would be my guess. I suppose that being left untouched overnight allowed the air to redistribute itself and that one or some of the radiators that I lovingly bled a couple of weeks ago now have an air bubble at the top. Ah well....
Anyway, I am bloody furious about being fleeced by the so-called respectable plumbing company who did the original repair some five years ago and who, unless I am missing something, charged me literally hundreds of pounds too much.
So... five years ago I also had water dripping from the combi. The plumber replaced the whole diverter valve assembly and, along with a substantial part of my bank balance, the leak went away. He left the faulty parts behind.
Scroll on to a couple of weeks ago and water is dripping again. With a little help from uk.d-i-y (okay, a LOT of help from uk.d-i-y) I come to the conclusion that I need a diaphragm repair kit.
When I stripped it down, the only fault I could find was water leaking from the gland nut for the DHW microswitch push rod. And the reason it was leaking? The top of the nut had broken off it's thread and water had been pouring out of the crack.
How does a nut like that fracture in service? Had it been overtightened or had it been faulty from the start? More to the point, I thought, how do I get the broken bits of thread out of the casting to fit a replacement? To help me work out what to do next and how to do it I decided to strip down the old, supposedly faulty, assembly and
- surprise, surprise - apart from a worn gland nut on that unit I could find nothing wrong with it. So I did my repair by using the diaphragm casing from the old assembly and a new gland nut from the repair kit I'd just bought.
As I said, I'm bloody furious about that first repair. As far as I can tell, that first plumber could have solved my problem by replacing a £3.95 gland nut or at the very outside, refurbished the unit with a standard repair kit. Of course it was five years ago, now almost impossible to prove what he did then and the realisation that it hadn't just been an expensive repair but that I had been taken for a mug back then has left me feeling very, very sore.
Rant over.
Nick
Yes, but.
Would you have been more furious if the guy had charged to £100 labour for a £3.95 part and then the the unit had failed somewhere else, later?
Example. I have a fuel gauge on the car that is suddenly stuck at 1/3rd full despite having completely filled the tank. The car has done 93,000 miles. If I go to Jaguar, I have to spend £160 on a new fuel pump and sender, but I can get a second hand sender off ebay for £25.
The labour will be around £120.
I've had more than one fuel pump on a diesel go at around 100k miles. It is a 'stranded by the side of the road' failure. (Ok I did mange to get one car home at 15mph up the hills, and nearly 45mph down the hills - gravity is a poor substitute for a low pressure lift pump)
The point being that in this case replacing the whole kit and caboodle with new is probably a sane move for reliability. And it is also a sane move from the point of warranty.
The plumber/car mechanic now feels he can give some kind of guarantee, and if something fails, he can claim from the manufacturer.
With labour as it as it has to be to keep plumbers in baked beans, it makes sense to replace everything in sight, really. Once you are on site.
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