Unvented Undersink Water Heaters. For D.I.Yers.

More's the point …

If you are teeing into an existing pipe, there will be water at the lowest point. If you cannot drain that bit, the pipe will never get hot enough for the solder to flow.

Oddly I've used the bread trick to do mods downstream of a stopcock that didn't quite live up to the task.  I did run the flame over the plugged part of the pipe as a last act, and what came out out of the taps resembled blackened crumbs of toast. Certainly an effective technique as a get out of jail card. Modern way is probably push fit, but I have an affinity for soldered joints.

I've also used a length of  earth sleeving pushed back up the pipe down the hole of a removed compression fitting on a  tap or similar to remove water,  either by blowing compressed air in, or better, where the geometry permitted, as a syphon. I've not tried to make an adaptor for the vacuum cleaner, but I imagine that may work as well.

Mike.

Most plumbers use a wet and dry vacuum cleaner to suck any remaining water out of the pipework. 

Of course as an electrician I have a Makita 18 volt cordless wet and dry vacuum cleaner readily to hand,  but learnt the other tricks when I only had a dry only Henry. 

The interesting point they don't tell one when they fit a water meter is the non-return valve! Perhaps a free expansion vessel should be fitted at the same time? This is beginning to sound like the smart meter saga….

I suppose I’m getting old.

Back in the 1960’s I watched plumbers bending 1½” copper pipes by filling them with sand, annealing them and pulling them around a tree.

I doubt there’s many colleges teach that anymore, the village plumber taught me to wipe lead joints between copper and lead pipes in the 1970’s which is now officially banned as well as how repair sheet lead, which I did quite a lot of back then. I was also taught to repair the lead work and replace glass in church windows by a glazier who was then in his seventies who had started to learn his trade in 1920’s who said he was too old to go up a ladder anymore.

Around this time last year I did joint up some lead for my own roof, but it’s not something I have done for a customer for a long time, lead work was once something I thought of specialising in, again it’s something that has changed over the years with the introduction of portable gas bottles and precise torchs, allowing different techniques to be used.

Now most people with a pair of Speedfit cutters and a pack of flexible hoses think they are plumbers, but actually the top end guys are moving onto using crimped fittings and copper pipe using cordless crimping tools, which is out of reach to most DIYers’s unless they are going to hire tools.

The biggest issue is knowing your limits, particularly in an age when people think they can use Google and YouTube to master any skil.

I just love brass compression fittings. Everlasting, compact, heat resistant and very good looking….oh! and they need no hot soldering or bulky compression tools.

Z.

I was fitting some new lights for a couple recently. They have installed a small unvented water heather that leaks water. It appears not to have an expansion vessel or pressure reducing valve as required by the makers, or a pressure relief valve. It has no discharge pipe to outside.

I made the husband aware of a maker's warning label on the front of the heater case whish reads IF THIS HEATER LEAKS WATER IMMEDIATELY TURN IT OFF AND CONTACT AN ENGINEER.

He seemed irritated that I had told him about this, and I believe that he will ignore the label's advice.

Z.

Zoomup: 
 

I just love brass compression fittings. Everlasting, compact, heat resistant and very good looking….oh! and they need no hot soldering or bulky compression tools.

 

Z.

You realise I said I was taught skills that are now obsolete by people who died a long time ago ?

Compression fittings have a place, they are also something I would not use unless readily accessible. 

Indeed I use compression fittings on tap tails where other people solder a fitting on.

Sparkingchip: 
 

Zoomup: 
 

I just love brass compression fittings. Everlasting, compact, heat resistant and very good looking….oh! and they need no hot soldering or bulky compression tools.

 

Z.

 

You realise I said I was taught skills that are now obsolete by people who died a long time ago ?

Compression fittings have a place, they are also something I would not use unless readily accessible. 

Indeed I use compression fittings on tap tails where other people solder a fitting on.

If I can install them anybody can. I use them for shower supplies.

Have a little look at the nice tundish bucket in this clip about 2 mins + in.