Inquest on scalded baby / faulty immersion heater

[Owain]

I thought this was because the c/h circuit was supplied by the cold water tank and not a separate header tank (thrifty)

Owain

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Years ago my parent's house had a heat exchanger fitted behind the coal fire which fed, via gravity circulation, a storage cylinder which also contained an immersion for times when the coal fire wasn't used. And this system would occasionally boil if a large fire had been on all day. You couldn't possibly ignore the racket it made...

[Dave Liquorice]

Where does that "fact" come from? It's not in the BBC report linked at the top of this thread or any of the previous articles ones linked from that one.

What I do find surprising is that no one noticed the noise a boiling cylinder makes, let alone go to bed and sleep with it happening. That is assuming that the system is a conventional cylinder on 1st floor, storage tank in attic.

[RobertL]

Ah yes of course, it's the bubbles of steam that do it rather than the change in density. Sorry to be thick.

Robert

[HelpMe]

Presumably the cold taps were fed from the rising main so there would have been no indication of this?

[Bob Eager]

No....hot water did come out of the cold taps but they "didn't know what to do about it".

[Lobster]

Now you mention it, yes of course! But 80F is I'm sure what the reporter said.

[David Hansen]

On Tue, 08 Jan 2008 16:19:34 +0000 (GMT) someone who may be "Dave Liquorice" wrote this:-

It was mentioned yesterday, either in an article or in television/radio coverage. I can't remember which.

Scalding may not have been mentioned, but hot water coming out of the "cold" taps was certainly mentioned.

[David Hansen]

On Tue, 08 Jan 2008 16:56:03 +0000 someone who may be HelpMe wrote this:-

I wouldn't presume this.

Cold taps are other outlets are fed from the cold water storage tank in many houses. Partly it depends on age and location, partly it depends on fashion and convenience when modifications were made. There are a number of advantages to outlets being fed in this way.

[David Hansen]

On Tue, 08 Jan 2008 16:03:14 +0000 someone who may be Owain wrote this:-

No. Houses with a cold water storage tank and a separate F&E tank have this arrangement, as do ones with no F&E tank because they have warm air heating.

[Ed Sirett]

I expect the issue is that there was no proper lid (aka Reg 30 or 60) . A lid to current standards is tight fitting and will add considerably to the buckling/folding resistance of the cistern at 80-100C.

As for the 3.5m million I wonder how they arrive at that figure.

Take the homes and multiply by the percentage of non-combi boiler sales last year? There are several reasons why that'll be an under estimate.

[David Hansen]

On Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:25:19 +0000 someone who may be The Natural Philosopher wrote this:-

And sadly there has just been the death of a toddler, following her dress catching fire. I have heard of a few similar cases, in ye olden days often involving night dresses.

[David W.E. Roberts]

Good old fashioned systems have galvanised steel tanks; the system I removed from here had an asbestos header tank for the central heating and a fibreglass tank for the cold water.

Probably neither of these would have suffered much from boiling water.

I also wonder how they arrived at this figure - think of a scary number and double it?

Sad to think that if they had run the cold tap for a while longer (until it ran cold?) this might have cooled everything down enough.

There may be sales figures for plastic water tanks and for immersion heaters and hot water tanks which could lead to an estimate of how many vented hot water systems with plastic cold water tanks there are.

3.5 million seems to be a very low figure - I would expect at least 50% of the housing built more than 20 years ago would have such a system. Possibly a good number don't have modern(ish) cold water tanks which deform at over 80C.

I am confident the Gordon Brown will shortly announce a law which makes it a criminal offence to have such a set up, but without any legislation to allow the police to enter your home to check.

[On the other hand.......excuse me Sir, we 'ave reason to believe you have an illegal cold water tank and have a warrant to search the premises. Oh dear, my my, what is this? An illegal copy of a Beatles CD? You're nicked, chummy!]

I presume the main outcome should be a campaign to replace your immersion heater if it is more than x years old, which could be a nice little earner for your local plumber.

Sympathy to the family for their tragic loss.

Cheers

Dave R.

[Andrew Gabriel]

That already happened after the incident (which was some time ago), except it was Prescott. You now have to have a second thermostat which does not automatically reset.

[Alan J. Wylie]

| Hours before the tragedy the couple found scalding hot water coming | out of the cold tap in their bathroom but did not know what to do | about it.

[Dave Baker]

I had the same in my house in Aberdeen. I had to dump hot water down the drain every few hours to stop it boiling which always struck me as very wasteful - or an excuse for another bath I suppose.

[Alan J. Wylie]

I helped replace an old rusty steel tank with plastic in May 1998. A so-called electrician recently re-did the control system, but failed to run the thermostat to a relay and instead allowed it to switch the full current of a large immersion heater. The thermostat contacts welded themselves shut, and heated water ended up circulating back into the cold water tank. It failed, though from the photos I've seen it was only a slight rupture, even though it did significant damage to the ceiling below.

[The Medway Handyman]

According to my local plumbers merchant all immersions heater have to be fitted with this trip.

[Roger Mills]

I don't think it applies retrospectively to immersion heaters which were installed before the regulation came into force. I'm pretty sure that mine hasn't got a safety cutout - but I virtually never use it, 'cos the water is heated by the CH boiler.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Must be an Aberdeen thing then as that's where I was born. If you had that much spare hot water regularly, a few rads round the house would have made use of it.