Time for a if-you-want-a-job-doing-properly-then-do-it-yourself rant...
I booked a local firm of plumbers in today. Main reason was I wanted to have my pressurised HW cylinder checked over, as it was long overdue; in particular as I explained to the manager over the phone I wanted the sacrifical anode looking at, as I wasn't convinced that had actually ever been checked. Pressurised cylinders and gas appliances are the two areas of plumbing I don't go near.
Matey comes round this morning, spends some time in the airing cupboard tinkering with the tank. When he's done I ask him, 'was the anode OK then?' 'Oh everythng's fine'. 'But what about the anode - how much life has it got left?' 'Oh it doesn't have an anode'.
So I trot downstairs and produce the manual for him, and point to the diagram showing the location of the anode, and the section where it explains how important it is that said anode is checked visually every two years.
"Oh, well they don't usually have anodes".
He duly extracted the thing, and was perhaps slightly sheepish(?) to find that it was mostly eroded away. Hopefully there's enough left to have still been doing its job. Anyway - I've just ordered a new one and having seen how easily it fits, certainly won't be summoning Matey back to fit it....
Moving on: I also wanted another job doing while he was there. Reason being that my house is still suffering from a previous attack by plumber, when we had an extension built about 10 years ago. This character (a different one) managed to plumb two downstairs radiators into the primary circuit, which meant they came on in synchrony with the hot water system; and conversely the bathroom towel rail is plumbed in to the central heating circuit. We unfortunately didn't cotton on to the error in long after the Lone Ranger had ridden off into the sunset. Anyway - I've given up on sorting out the downstairs rads (too far from the rest of the CH system), but had decided to divert the towel rail to the primary circuit, to keep SWMBO happy. I'd already run 10mm copper tube under the floors and all that remained was to drain down, swap over the connections at the towel rail end and splice the other ends into the primary circuit. However, the location of the pipes was really fiddly, and I had visions of me chopping into the primary pipes and being unable to fix them again - resulting in massive loss of all the hopefully accruing SWMBO brownie points. So I'd decided to let the plumber do this while he was here. Sorry, rambling.
So, knowing that Matey would need to drain down most of the CH system to do this job, more CH inhibitor was going to be needed. Knowing my system is loaded with X-100 (as put there by the same firm when they fitted my boiler, 2 years ago) and not wanting to mix different types, I asked him what sort he carried. 'Erm - don't think I've got any'.
Why the hell would a plumber attend a job necessitating a drain-down without bringing inhibitor? Was he planning on taking an hour out, on my time, to go and buy some during the day, or - as I suspect - just not going to bother at all? Never found out. Anyway, I duly nipped out to B&Q and bought a bottle of X-100 myself.
As I said at the start, sometimes it really makes you wonder what the point is of employing a pro. If I'd been like most of Joe Public, and had not a clue about my own system, today I'd have been left with a potentially highly dangerous HW tank and a gently corroding CH system; neither of which would have made their presence known for many months, or even years... at which point a nice big new job would be generated for the plumber.
Rant over. Time for beer. David