Salamander pump

[rockycat]

Thanks for all of your help. We had a plumber round last night who seems to know what he's talking about, unlike the one who installed the system

Turns out that as we have an old system the pump would never have worked properly. Our system doesn't separate the hot water and the radiators, and we have no way of controlling the water temperature, so the hot water was getting far too hot for the pump to cope with. We now have to spend £750 upgrading the system. Joy.

Thanks again.

 

[Richard C]

Doesn’t separate the hot water & the radiators, what does that mean A £750 upgrade sounds a bit drastic & is a lot of money for what may only be the lack of a motorized valve & a HW cylinder thermostat to control the water temperature! From your symptoms, it sounds as if you have more than one problem, I would do a little more investigating & get a bit more advice before you go ahead with the “upgrade”; what exactly is “new” plumber going to do for that sort on money you should ask him to itemise both the parts & the work hes going to do. If you’re going to withhold payment from the original installer, legally, you must give them adequate opportunity to sort the problem out or you could end up paying both bills & still be no better off!

Maybe “new" plumb is using terminology he thinks you will more easily understand but it sounds a little sus to me. How do you know he is any more knowledgeable than the original who may not be entirely at fault anyway; “new” plumber may just be spinning you a load of bullshit to get a nice little earner.

 

[seco services]

sounds like he's got a primatic.

 

[Richard C]

sounds like he's got a primatic.

Could be but I haven’t seen one for many years. I would have thought "original" plumber should have spotted it straight away; & the shower would be pumping out crap water as well wouldn’t it

 

[seco services]

Could be but I haven’t seen one for many years.

didn't think they where still fitting primatics
but i got a customer who had one replaced only 2 yr ago by bg

I would have thought "original" plumber should have spotted it straight away;

would of thought so when he took the cold feed from the tank at least.

& the shower would be pumping out crap water as well wouldn’t it

not sure never seen a shower pump on a primatic.

 

[rockycat]

Doesn’t separate the hot water & the radiators, what does that mean A £750 upgrade sounds a bit drastic & is a lot of money for what may only be the lack of a motorized valve & a HW cylinder thermostat to control the water temperature! From your symptoms, it sounds as if you have more than one problem, I would do a little more investigating & get a bit more advice before you go ahead with the “upgrade”; what exactly is “new” plumber going to do for that sort on money you should ask him to itemise both the parts & the work hes going to do. If you’re going to withhold payment from the original installer, legally, you must give them adequate opportunity to sort the problem out or you could end up paying both bills & still be no better off!

Maybe “new" plumb is using terminology he thinks you will more easily understand but it sounds a little sus to me. How do you know he is any more knowledgeable than the original who may not be entirely at fault anyway; “new” plumber may just be spinning you a load of bulls**t to get a nice little earner.

Please bear with me, I really am a complete amateur (and a female, if that makes any difference!).

We apparently have gravity hot water pumped heating, installed when the house was built in 1968. Our boiler basically has an on and off switch, and a thermostat which I'm told controls the temperature of the water in the radiators but not the temperature of the water coming from the tap (?). If we want hot water in the summer we have the boiler on, with the ROOM thermostat turned down so that the radiators don't come on. The longer we have the boiler on, the hotter the water gets, to the point where it's scalding.

To give a bit more background to the plumbers, our shower is part of quite a major renovation project. The company who have done the renovation employs a number of labourers, including the original plumber. The boss of said company sent this new plumber, who is not employed by him, to diagnose the problem, since the original plumber didn't know what to do. That's what's led me to believe that this second plumber knows more what he's talking about.

We've yet to pay the building company their final instalment of money and are witholding it untilwitholding system that works. We feel that we need to pay for the system "upgrade" as it's our problem, but we don't want to pay the balance to the original firm because we haven't got what we paid for, plus we may have two damaged Salamander pumps now, for which we think the company should pay rather than us.

I asked the new plumber why we can't just have a thermostat fitted to the hot water tank and he said, "Because there's nothing to connect it to, as it's gravity that's feeding the tank. You need a lot of additional work carried out in order to make a thermostat work," or words to that effect. Does that sound right? I really am completely in the dark here.

Really appreciate your help.

 

[rockycat]

Post deleted for not making any sense - sorry!

 

[Richard C]

We apparently have gravity hot water pumped heating, installed when the house was built in 1968.

Gravity systems are not generally used now but there is nothing wrong with a well designed & installed gravity hot water system, they can be extremely efficient. My current property, bought 5 years ago, is still running a gravity HW system which was also installed in 1968. The previous owner had replaced the oil fired boiler the previous year but did not upgrade the rest of the system & my original thought was to retain the new boiler but replace everything else. I found, however, that the system worked so well there seemed little point in ripping it all out for no good reason so what I did in the end was just replace the hot & cold water storage tanks, radiators & radiator pipe work & fit some additional controls. The system now also runs 2 power showers from a Salamander pump & has worked faultlessly for the last 3 years.

Our boiler basically has an on and off switch, and a thermostat which I'm told controls the temperature of the water in the radiators but not the temperature of the water coming from the tap (?). If we want hot water in the summer we have the boiler on, with the ROOM thermostat turned down so that the radiators don't come on. The longer we have the boiler on, the hotter the water gets, to the point where it's scalding.

All you may need is some additional controls fitted to the existing system; see below.

I asked the new plumber why we can't just have a thermostat fitted to the hot water tank and he said, "Because there's nothing to connect it to, as it's gravity that's feeding the tank. You need a lot of additional work carried out in order to make a thermostat work," or words to that effect. Does that sound right? I really am completely in the dark here.

A 2 port motorized valve in the HW feed from the boiler & a thermostat strapped to the HW cylinder will control the HW temp; the stat is wired to shut off the valve at the set temperature & also the boiler if you don’t have the central heating selected “on”. You may also need another 2 port valve fitted in the central heating feed to prevent gravity circulation through & the rads getting hot in summer when you just select HW. It sounds as if you also need a new programmer but they are not that expensive.

To give a bit more background to the plumbers, our shower is part of quite a major renovation project. The company who have done the renovation employs a number of labourers, including the original plumber. The boss of said company sent this new plumber, who is not employed by him, to diagnose the problem, since the original plumber didn't know what to do. That's what's led me to believe that this second plumber knows more what he's talking about.

It is beginning to sound as if plumber 1 got it wrong but if your paying Mr builder to renovate & install a new shower, it’s down to him to asses what’s required & advise your options & supervise his plumber. If he gets it wrong (as it now seems likely) & it doesn’t work, it’s his problem to sort it out not yours!

We've yet to pay the building company their final instalment of money and are witholding it untilwitholding system that works. We feel that we need to pay for the system "upgrade" as it's our problem, but we don't want to pay the balance to the original firm because we haven't got what we paid for, plus we may have two damaged Salamander pumps now, for which we think the company should pay rather than us.

As far as the upgrade goes, it’s difficult to assess exactly what you need without seeing it but it may be as little as a couple of valves, a cylinder stat & a new programmer but, considering the problems you’re having, it could involve replacing the hw/cw storage tanks if they are tired. If it’s the latter, then £750 may be getting near the mark but you should find out exactly what they will be doing for the money.

As far as I’m concerned, the damaged pumps are their responsibility, it sounds as if they were cooked through incompetence. Salamander state categorically that the temperature of the HW must not exceed 65 degrees or it invalidates the warranty; it would be obvious to any competent installer that it's impossible to control the water temp. on a system such as yours without installing additional controls. As a minimum this would require a motorized valve & stat on the HW circuit but, in addition, the system is best fitted with a Thermostatic Control Valve which mixes the hot & cold water feeds directly from the tanks such that the HW will not exceed a pre-set temperature & will never exceed 60 degrees.

 

[rockycat]

I'm so sorry, I forgot to thank you for your detailed response.

We had a plumber out today who did what you suggested (he agreed there was no need to replace the storage tanks). By "what you suggested" obviously I don't mean that I showed him this thread and he did it at your suggestion, I mean that his assessment of what needed doing was the same as yours! So we now have a more sophisticated system to heat our water and our house.

However, the shower is still not working. It's doing exactly what it was doing originally: it pumps out very hot water, we adjust the temperature lever and it makes no difference until it suddenly blasts out freezing cold water. We've gone back to the boss of the building company to ask what he wants to do next...

 

[doitall]

Is the valve the right way round.

 

[Richard C]

Is it a thermostatic mixer valve? Is it suitable for high pressure? It sounds as if something is causing a pressure imbalance between the hot & cold suppplies but its almost impossible to diagnose what may be causing it from a distance without a lot more information regarding how the system has been plumbed, the size & route of the pipe work (up & over loops etc), what’s been installed & exactly where. After re-reading the thread, the only things I can safely establish is that the pump circuit is possibly negative head, you’re unsure where the hot feed is taken from or if a recomended fitting has been used, you may not have any air vents & you originally had an uncontrolled h/w system.

Please don’t take this the wrong way but, by your own admission, you don’t have much idea of what you’re looking at & this makes it very difficult for anyone on here to understand what’s been done & to give accurate advice. The one thing that may help, as previously suggested, is to take decent photos of everything on the system & post them on here.

At least your uncontrolled h/w system now seems to be sorted, presumably at a more realistic cost than was initially quoted.

 

[rockycat]

Well I took lots of photos but never got round to posting them. However, I think the problem has been resolved. It turns out that the shower was installed upside down On Aqualisa's advice the plumber took off the front plate and checked whether the hot and cold were the right way round, and they weren't. Rather than cut in to the tiles to turn the whole thing around 180 degrees he instead swapped the hot and cold feeds to the wrong way round, and it seems to have done the trick. The pump has also stopped going on and off sporadically.

So three months later, numerous plumbers, a replacement pump and numerous calls to Salamander and Aqualisa, I think we finally got there. Now we're just considering how to approach the main building boss about payment. Do you think it would be reasonable to expect some sort of reduction on our final payment for all of the hassle, not to mention the expense of the recent plumber doing the work on our system? I know that what he did is worthwhile in the long-run, but it's an expense we really could have done without right now, on top of all the other costs.

Thanks again.