The message from "Homer2911" contains these words:
Why shouldn't my kids be safe on the streets alone. Make it increasingly hard for kids to learn independance and you'll just end up with insecure kids.
No Drivel. I have referred to hard evidence that Legionnella in H&C water systems is killed and controlled by control of water temperatures. I have made nothing up, I refer you to the HSE publication.
Indeed, your kids should be safe to walk the streets alone, but the fact is that they are not. If you are a parent of very young children, you are grossly negligent if you understand this, but let them out alone anyway, and you should be prosecuted if anything happens to them.
How many times have we heard of the abduction of a child under the age of ten, sent out alone to the corner shop?
The message from "Homer2911" contains these words:
Far less often than thirty years ago, apparently.
Well, actually, that's not actually true. We /hear/ of it more often but it actually happens less often.
A google for "abduction" + "corner shop" only gives 524 hits, so probably not that often.
When I was 5 I was walking to school on my own.
Owain
I thought that was frowned on and you were supposed to fit them as close as possible to the point of use? (But then, maybe that's the TMV manufacturers' association recommendation? :-))
Oh dear they are very NHS-looking aren't they? This is for a Steiner school and they'd never wear anything with that sort of aesthetic :-)
I think it'll have to be home-made rad covers (and plenty of insulation to the building to give the rads a chance of coping). Suppose one could have fan-heater-type blowers in the enclosures to give a bit of extra output when needed.
It would be interesting to know what proportion of these are due to hot water from taps as opposed to other sources, e.g. spillage from kettles and cooking utensils.
As close as possible does not rule out using one valve to serve a row of handbasins in a washroom.
The design is limited by the need to allow adequate airflow through, while keeping the metal parts far enough away from the radiators to stop them getting too hot. Being white does not help with the image, but hospitals like white.
They are all made to order, so we can do pretty colours, or make them less obvious with a dark colour.
The problem is, would you know if home made covers gave the proper level of protection? How would the school fare if a kid claimed to have sustained a burn from an unproven cover? Ours had to be redesigned a couple of times to get the surface temperature down to the right level at all points on the surface, and we have a certificate from an independent test lab to show that they do.
I would be surprised if you could do that without raising the temperature of parts of the cover above the recommended levels.
Colin Bignell
Dunno about that but the depth of water in that bath suggests the darling mite could be in much more danger from drowning than scalding
The idea was to minimize the length of the blended water pipework, because it was a greater legionella hazard. You'd use one TMV to supply a group of fitings.
nightjar "John Stumbles" wrote
RAL, or Farrow & Ball? :-)
If the relevant regs only apply to touchable hot surfaces then high-level "mysons" might be acceptable.
Owain
Hand painted pictures of local landmarks, if that is what the customer wants. RAL colours would be cheaper though.
Colin Bignell
I meant the sort of wooden grille-type covers you get for prettifying rads in houses. Obviously they'll cut down output a lot but in the main area concerned the rads would still cope if the room weren't haemmoraghing heat :-(
You still ought to verify the surface temperatures achieved. It is surprisingly easy to end up with local hotspots.
Colin Bignell
Funnily enough one of few the things you can just about guarantee in a legionella outbreak is that the HSE will NOT sample anything. What they do is look at your risk assessment and whether you have correctly identified and implemented the precautions required, including monitoring and record keeping. If you have done all this, then even if you have killed people, you are not in breach of the law as perfection is not required only "all that is reasonably practicable". Complying fully with L8 is taken as doing this.
Whether there are, or ever were, actually any legionella present is not really relevant, it is the risk you must control under the law, not the actuality per say. They have established case law on this (over the BBC's London outbreak). As all biological sampling is a bit hit and miss it is better legally not to sample, so they do not. You would be sampling a dynamic system at least a week too late anyway. In any case the first thing any half intelligent building manager would do at a hint of legionella problem would be to superchlorinate their system, (purely to protect the public from any possibility of ongoing risk of course and not with the intention of destroying potential evidence, which would be entirely coincidental).
The people who do tend to sample are the local Environmental Health department as part of the Outbreak Control Team, as their primary interest is in trying to establish the source to protect public health and not prove legal culpability. But only positive results mean anything, negative ones disprove nothing. That is why routine sampling is not recommended (except for very high risk situations such as cooling towers or systems that cannot be fully controlled for some unavoidable reason) as negative results give a false sense of security.
There was also a comment that TMC's do not need to be maintained as they fail slowly and you do not get sudden scalds, but rather water that is unacceptably cool. I am sorry I cannot recall who said this.
While this may be true, the scalding risk is not the only risk. From the legionella viewpoint maintenance is critical as TMC's inevitably get scaled (or attacked by aggressive water) and then present internal surfaces ripe for biofilm colonisation. Without maintenance the colonisation gets heavy resulting is significant levels of discharge. This is also why the TMC needs to be as close as possible to the outlet
- as the system will probably get colonised, the shorter the run the lower the number of legionella that someone can then be exposed to, (minimising a risk you cannot completely eliminate).
This is also why you should not routinely sample downstream of a TMC, if you are seeking to establish if the system as a whole is OK, as all you end up testing in effect is the TMC and downstream pipe run. This you already know is at a risky temperature, so showing legionella presence does not really tell you much, unless there are vast numbers. Even then it probably only means the TMC and outlet are not being maintained properly and you should know if you are doing this already. Thus why spend the money on testing when it is better to spend it on doing the maintenance properly in the first place?
Patrick
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