Arrrgh Boilers leaking water everywhere

[stytagm]

Why does this always happen when the girlfriends is away?

Anyhoo, I've just got back from town (few drinkies and a curry after work, so I'm running at a little less than full mental capacity) and I wander into the kitchen to find that the boiler's leaking all over the place. Dripping water all down the wall over the counter etc, and it looks like it has been for hours.

So what do I do? I've got a bucket under there for now, but it's not catching all the drips, so do I call a plumber? (at 1 in the morning, how much is that going to cost?) or do I leave it until the morning? Will I ruin the flat downstairs' kitchen with water damage?

Do I ring the Mrs? (She's at her Granddad's this weekend, and won't appreciate being woken up).

Help! I just want to go to bed!

Other extraneous details: 1. The boiler is only 3 years old. 2. it was serviced just last week. 3. I'm really a bit too drunk to have to deal with this. 4. Firefox has a really good built in spell checker.

[shadowmaster]

You cant be that drunk- afterall you did start this thread.

Anyhow I see 3 options-

1) Get some more buckets (or similar) and put them under the boiler- and then go to sleep (preferably upstairs)

2) Ring up a plumber- not sure about the costs- but they will probably skin you.

3) Forget about it, go to sleep and hopefully when you wake up it was all a bad dream

On a more serious note- is it the boiler leaking water fast, or slow? If its slow then it might not cause much damage.

[Whiternoise]

Is there any way you can shut off the water going into the boiler (and hence, presumably flowing out of it)?

Oh, and don't forget to have a moan at the servicing people in the morning when you're a bit more sober

[malfunction]

Turn the boiler off completely (to make sure it can't fire up with no water in it), go to the toilet one last time, flush and let it fill up again, get a big glass of water and then turn the water off completely until the morning... This is assuming it isn't going to be cold enough to freeze the pipes / you tonight and you know where your stopcock is (no sniggering please)

[shadowmaster]

Just in case anyone is wondering -

Stopcock - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Just had a look at the weather forecast- its not that cold tonight in London so the pipes should not freeze.

[stytagm]

Well I googled and ended up ringing British Gas, as they have a 24 hour boiler service line, all they could suggest was "turn the water off at the main and ring us back at 7:30 tomorrow, PS It's gonna cost a fortune".

Took the kitchen apart and found the stopcock behind the washing machine, was just about able to reach it but the bugger wouldn't budge. After 10 mins with some mole-grips I managed to get it turned off, and break the end's off the tap, so I've no idea how we're gonna turn it on again.

Turn the boiler off completely (to make sure it can't fire up with no water in it), go to the toilet one last time, flush and let it fill up again, get a big glass of water and then turn the water off completely until the morning... This is assuming it isn't going to be cold enough to freeze the pipes / you tonight and you know where your stopcock is (no sniggering please)

Luckily my self preservation when drunk gene kicked in and I have 2 bottles and a pint glass of water, and I've cleaned my teeth. I'm off to bed, this crisis can wait.

I also tried ringing the Mrs to ask her where the stopcock was but (probably luckily) she'd turned her phone off.

[IBM]

So how are things looking in the cold light of day?

You broke the ends off the tap? That's going to be fun to deal with.

[JPreston]

Bit of gender role reversal going on here isn't there?

We had a heating problem a week or so ago, signed up to british gas homecare, they sent the most incompetent person I've ever met, after repeated visits still not fixed and I was getting hacked off with losing fees from all this time off so in the last week I've learnt everything there is to know about domestic heating installations and just fixed it myself.

You need to replace your stopcock, so turn your mains off from outside. There will be a little 4" square hatch in the ground most likely on the pavement that you can flip up, you can either buy the tool to shut it off or make one out of a length of wood (cut a v-notch out of the end and nail a cross-piece to the top to act as a handle), my recommendation is the second.

Run the cold water tap in the kitchen to make sure you have just stopped the mains - all your other taps will feed from elsewhere, must be that one - turn it off afterwards. Assuming you have compression fittings on your broke stopcock (i.e. not soldered joints, in which case you'll have to cut the pipe top and bottom, leaving you with a longer gap to fill and obviously no going back so get a plumber) grip the valve with slip-joint pliers or similar (so as not to stress the pipe) and undo the nuts with an adjustable spanner. Slide the nuts away from the stopcock and pull the pipes out top and bottom. The water in the pipe will drop out now so have a towel handy.

Get yourself down wickes or similar taking your broke stopcock with you. Taking the olives off the pipe would be a PITA so buy the exact same one as a replacement - you are going to save a lot of hassle by using the existing olives. Also get some PTFE tape. Wrap the olive with just a little PTFE tape and just straight replace the stopcock. Cross your fingers and turn the mains back on. You've just saved yourself £100+ .

So.....what sort of heating system do you have, open (vented) or sealed, and what sort of boiler do you have? Next thing will be to fully drain your system down. You will need to stop it refilling from your cold water storage tank, in an open system there is likely a valve between the cold water tank and expansion tank to let you do this, otherwise, tape up the ball valve in the expansion tank. Get yourself some garden hose, clip/tape this to a drain-off valve and put the other end down an outside drain, then drain down the system. If you don't have a drian-off valve, you'll need to take off a radiator, which will be messy. Don't get any of that water on carpet, it will ruin it. But once the system is drained there will be no more leak, you will still have water to all your taps and toilet, but obviously no heating. Don't worry about pipes freezing, we just had a week with no heat and nothing froze inside the house.

So how exactly is the boiler leaking, take the cover off, can you see damaged pipe, heat exchanger, or what? That is where it can get expensive...

[Mrs Hex]

Any news?

[Daymonkey]

Bit of gender role reversal going on here isn't there?

We had a heating problem a week or so ago, signed up to british gas homecare, they sent the most incompetent person I've ever met, after repeated visits still not fixed and I was getting hacked off with losing fees from all this time off so in the last week I've learnt everything there is to know about domestic heating installations and just fixed it myself.

You need to replace your stopcock, so turn your mains off from outside. There will be a little 4" square hatch in the ground most likely on the pavement that you can flip up, you can either buy the tool to shut it off or make one out of a length of wood (cut a v-notch out of the end and nail a cross-piece to the top to act as a handle), my recommendation is the second.

Run the cold water tap in the kitchen to make sure you have just stopped the mains - all your other taps will feed from elsewhere, must be that one - turn it off afterwards. Assuming you have compression fittings on your broke stopcock (i.e. not soldered joints, in which case you'll have to cut the pipe top and bottom, leaving you with a longer gap to fill and obviously no going back so get a plumber) grip the valve with slip-joint pliers or similar (so as not to stress the pipe) and undo the nuts with an adjustable spanner. Slide the nuts away from the stopcock and pull the pipes out top and bottom. The water in the pipe will drop out now so have a towel handy.

Get yourself down wickes or similar taking your broke stopcock with you. Taking the olives off the pipe would be a PITA so buy the exact same one as a replacement - you are going to save a lot of hassle by using the existing olives. Also get some PTFE tape. Wrap the olive with just a little PTFE tape and just straight replace the stopcock. Cross your fingers and turn the mains back on. You've just saved yourself £100+ .

So.....what sort of heating system do you have, open (vented) or sealed, and what sort of boiler do you have? Next thing will be to fully drain your system down. You will need to stop it refilling from your cold water storage tank, in an open system there is likely a valve between the cold water tank and expansion tank to let you do this, otherwise, tape up the ball valve in the expansion tank. Get yourself some garden hose, clip/tape this to a drain-off valve and put the other end down an outside drain, then drain down the system. If you don't have a drian-off valve, you'll need to take off a radiator, which will be messy. Don't get any of that water on carpet, it will ruin it. But once the system is drained there will be no more leak, you will still have water to all your taps and toilet, but obviously no heating. Don't worry about pipes freezing, we just had a week with no heat and nothing froze inside the house.

So how exactly is the boiler leaking, take the cover off, can you see damaged pipe, heat exchanger, or what? That is where it can get expensive...

Don't take the boiler cover off unless you're qualified.
Have you never seen hollyoaks?

[stytagm]

Right, Hooray for timely updates.

The end result is that I rang the bloke who'd done the service and he popped round the next morning and had a look at it for free. The troubling thing is that by the time he turned up the blinking thing was fine.

He thinks he knows what went wrong, and his best advice was to take out a cover policy with the manufacturers, because that'll be a lot cheaper if it breaks again.

As for the tap on the rising main, well it's back behind the washing machine now, so it can stay as it is (out of sight out of mind and all). Problem is, because we're in a block of flats we can't easily turn off the water at street level without affecting everyone else.

Cheers for all the advice, in the cold light of day it wasn't all that bad, but in the middle of the night it was more than I needed.

- Andrew.

[Mrs Hex]

Yay - glad to hear it's all good. I hate boilers.