This is not about tempering valves but it could be.
During the global economic crisis in Australia a lot of dreadful work was done with plumbers who had worked their way through actuarial school and then were employed by big plumbing companied designing solar hot water systems very quickly to obtain the government grants to stimulate the economy in early 90s. The idea was that your solar panels were designed to fail the year after the warranty expired.
Unfortunately mine failed in the last year of warranty which was annoying because I thought I had traded performance for reliability. The large company involved had a trick up their sleave with the warranty agreement which was a work of art by the actuary.
Replacement parts was honoured but the labour to fit them or diagnose a fault was not. So when the panels failed and discharged water onto the roof and environment, on Christmas day, I got a plumber to un hook the water. 600 bucks, then to fit olives, to fix it 600 bucks. Then to apply to the company for warranty of the leaking panels, another firm associated with the company had to inspect the panels, 800 bucks to declare them kaput by the company's nominated plumber.
At this point I realised I had been had. Was loosing money fast and it was a form of corruption where I was logically being marched into a circumstance as admitted by the plumbers to abandon my efforts to fix the panels as that system would never pay for itself. A new system might fail again of course after 7 years the warranty period. I decided that was indeed true but insisted on obtaining the panels from the company who insisted on me getting a licenced plumber to quote and receive the panels, and that I needed to put up scaffold. My roof was flat and I was sick of the rip off. But I wanted my cut from the warranty since the lot had cost over 6000 to set up initially and to shame the company, so I insisted.
Fortunately for me my plumber did receive the panels and mucked up his address and had them dropped off at my place, he declared it not to be rocket science, he said he was far too busy to put them up and would I do the job myself and get him to inspect or terminate the fittings? Possession is 9/10ths of the issue.
Fortunately I am ok with tools and can read plans research the manufactures instructions and was able to get the panels on the roof, fitted new olives and got the system going as it was not indeed rocket science. Guess what the quote was given to me for having this done by the company plumber? 2800 Australian dollars. It cost me 18 dollars for copper olives. The system is working again. All lights and the pump is going. Solar hot water again.
But what a fuss and bother. Forums like this are great, as is YouTube if you have the time.
Have you found out a price yet?
