Leaking galvanised steel water tank in loft ??

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well you might want to have a model train layout of Clapham Junction in the 1940s there instead.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well being the thickest trade, Darwin's Law and the Peter Principle should be applied. i.e plumbers will by definition be promoted just beyond their level of competence, but still not quite so bad that they become unemployable. You paid him didn't you?

[charles]

we paid his employer, the firm has gone out of business

[Colin Bignell]

There having been two burst water mains in the South recently, I was think more of unplanned interruptions. However, even a full cistern in the loft wouldn't keep the toilet flushing if you had no water for ten days, as recently happened in the Rye area.

[AlanC]

Not sure what the ??? was for. What part of my comment did you not understand?

All of our replacement taps and toilets were standard items. We wanted to improve the flow rate for H/W (particularly in the kitchen which would take a couple of minutes to get anything resembling hot water from the tap), which is why we converted to an un-vented HW cylinder.

I was just commenting that the original taps and toilets were still in place for several months after the H/W conversion and worked fine.

The (expected) increase in H/W flow rate sometimes caught us off guard having been used to having to open the taps significantly prior to the conversion.

[Robert]

If your Mains Water pressure is high and you are concerned about old taps etc. Just fit a pressure reducing valve at the same time. You may even be able to do the "bypass" outside the loft ( where the HW cylinder used to be) dependant on the pipe layout.

[SH]

So you like having lead metal in your drinking water? :-)

there is a reason why leaded petrol and leaded paint is banned.... :-)

I use lead free solder and you do have to (a) clean all surfaces including inside fittigs, (b) use a flux and (c) use more heat.

[SH]

Sounds like they did not use pipe stiffeners which is mandatory when working with plastic pipe and plastic pipe fittings!

and also no, you cannot mix up brands either when making a joint.

[charles]

yes, that was found to be the case in one - mains pressure joint. I had to contact Trading Standards to get it repaired and the damage sorted.

[The Natural Philosopher]

It was a hot water circuit. To one tap And the amount is so trivial as to be totally insignificant

Mostly political. The Art Student mind. Golly, someone drowned in a lake! Ban Water!

Petrol? yes enough fumes in the air to make a difference. Paint? No, not really. But it wasn't needed anyway

Did all of that.

It still sucked.

[Tim+]

Um, no. Clearly you didn’t pay attention at art school. He has a combi for hot water. Therefore it’s providing gravity fed cold water to the toilet, bath and sink.

Well that’s probably true.

Tim

[Harry Bloomfield Esq]

On the other hand, it offers some really worthwhile advantages, denied those who really on the instant water heating of a combi-boiler system.

[Animal]

Trust me, feeding mains pressure into a copper hw cylinder does not have any advantages.

[Andrew]

You may have accelerated or caused the problem by trapping condensation on the outside of the tank which previously might have just evaporated away

[John J]

"Collapsible" poly tanks are available for just such jobs. The term collapsible is somewhat generous having actually used one and fought to fold it down and drag it through the hatch once but they do work. A fibreglass and resin repair might work but preparing the surface of the old tank and achieving a seal to the outlet etc would not be trivial

[John J]

Whatever happened to mad mark aka IMM? (The plastic pipe expert)

[AnthonyL]

The loft is quite dry and well ventilated.* Internal tank erosion was noted by our house surveryor 8yrs ago. It was on a "round toit" list when I'd expected to have had work done including an updated combi boiler. Just have left it a bit too long.

*I had made a mistake of pushing the insulation right up to the eves when I did it last year. Two days later the whole loft was dripping. Pulled it back and fine thereafter.

[AnthonyL]

Immaterlal, previousl owners ripped out the tank fed hot water cylinder.

[Tim+]

Whatever you do, don’t say his name three times…

Tim

[Harry Bloomfield Esq]

I was not suggesting feeding mains pressure into a hw cylinder, rather I was pointing out that retaining a stored hw system has major advantages over the quite meagre flow from a combi.