This incident happened whilst the occupants were out, what follows is a short description how a hot water cylinder can cause devastating damage.

Background

The hot water cylinder you can see in the second picture from the left was installed by the original owners some years ago. It appears they were not qualified to do so and the installation was ok, but some flaws were evident. The main one being the 15mm pipe used as the pressure relief discharge. This overtime degraded and burst causing high pressure hot water to escape and cause a lot of water damage as you can see in the video. Lucky for the occupants they were out at the time but had they been in, they could well have been scalded as the hot water escaped or been injured with the ceiling collapsing.

Response

I was asked to attend after a company attended the night before, failed to isolate the supply and left the cylinder leaking…charging the new occupant £120 for the pleasure!

Having isolated the supply and made the cylinder safe, I went on to relocate the cylinder downstairs and installed a new one.

The cylinder has been installed in accordance with the building regulations in force at the time and is now providing high pressure hot water to the whole house, and is performing much better than the old cylinder.

Conclusion

Many people have this cylinder in their homes, if you have it is imperative that you get them serviced on an annual basis, had the previous owners done so on this occasion, we will have picked up the issues and possibly prevented the problem from occurring.

This is an insurance claim of over £40,000, the whole kitchen, ceiling and floor has been water damaged requiring full replacement.

To get a quote to replace your old hot water cylinder, please call Mark on 07584 373876 or use the form below to get in touch

Alternatively, use our online quoting tool to get a quote