11-11-2016, 04:22 PM
From personal experience, flexible couplings are the spawn of the devil, and no matter how well you keep the system clean, the hot coupler will always erode from the inside out at a bend in the coupler. Plumbers (and I use the term lightly) tend to use them for connecting up the water under sinks and baths, rather than do a professional job and use brass fittings. Lazy lazy lazy, as a friend found out to his cost when the hot blew under an upstairs sink just after he went out, and came back 20 minutes later to a house full of steam, the boiler running it's nuts off and the kitchen ceiling on the floor.
As to boilers, we are on oil as we're in the sticks, and the house boiler is a Grant Combi 90 mk2. I recently had to carry out some work on the unit as the always weepy 15mm nut on the top of the heat exchanger had run out of torque and it needed a new unit. You can imagine my surprise when taking the old unit out to find the previous house owner had gotten a supposed boiler engineer in and had used instant gasket rather than the proper fibre washer. Add to this a new pair of thermostats as the old ones were getting unreliable and a days worth of work ended up with me on my knees tuning the system with a thermocouple.
If you want something done right, as I found out, if you can do it, do it yourself.
As to boilers, we are on oil as we're in the sticks, and the house boiler is a Grant Combi 90 mk2. I recently had to carry out some work on the unit as the always weepy 15mm nut on the top of the heat exchanger had run out of torque and it needed a new unit. You can imagine my surprise when taking the old unit out to find the previous house owner had gotten a supposed boiler engineer in and had used instant gasket rather than the proper fibre washer. Add to this a new pair of thermostats as the old ones were getting unreliable and a days worth of work ended up with me on my knees tuning the system with a thermocouple.
If you want something done right, as I found out, if you can do it, do it yourself.
