Hi,
Trying to get my head around what may have caused our, admittedly very old, plastic cold water storage tank to split and leak through the bathroom ceiling.
We have what I believe is referred to as an open vented system - conventional boiler, cold water storage tank and small header tank in loft, hot water cylinder in airing cupboard.
There is a small Drayton HTS 3 thermostat attached to the cylinder which is set to just under 60 degrees.
To be honest, despite doing a lot of reading up online, I have several questions about how the various aspects of the system work and why, for example, we have an immersion heater in the top of the cylinder that has no power cable attached to it?!
Anyway, this week we had water dripping through the bathroom ceiling so I go up into the loft and find an inch long split at the base of the tank, close to where one of the pipes enters the tank. Surrounding timbers and the base the tank sits on where all soaked.
I can't for the life of me understand what's caused the split, if the pipe had been wrenched or taken a blow stressing the point it joins the tank, I could maybe understand but nothings fallen on the pipe and I certainly haven't touched it. However, something a friend of mine said to me has got me thinking - he said it's possible that hot water travelling up the expansion pipe from the hot water cylinder discharges into the cold water tank and if there was enough of it, it could raise the temp in cold water tank and potentially cause a split in 30-40 year old plastic.
Is that feasible?
Under what circumstances would water do this, is it when there is too much or too hot, water in the cylinder and it needs to go somewhere?
This has got me thinking that perhaps we produce too much hot water, currently the hot water is on 4hrs in the morning and 4hrs in the early evening and there's only 2 of us in the house.
Or am I confusing things, surely the boiler won't run continuously heating water, it'll run until the water gets to the temp set on the cylinder thermostat and stop?
We went on holiday for the first time in years for a week recently and one thought was that 8hrs of hot water was still being produced everyday (and not being used) so would that mean it would be discharged into the expansion pipe and subsequently the cold water tank?
Sorry for the long post.
Thanks for any clarification you can give.
Nick
Trying to get my head around what may have caused our, admittedly very old, plastic cold water storage tank to split and leak through the bathroom ceiling.
We have what I believe is referred to as an open vented system - conventional boiler, cold water storage tank and small header tank in loft, hot water cylinder in airing cupboard.
There is a small Drayton HTS 3 thermostat attached to the cylinder which is set to just under 60 degrees.
To be honest, despite doing a lot of reading up online, I have several questions about how the various aspects of the system work and why, for example, we have an immersion heater in the top of the cylinder that has no power cable attached to it?!
Anyway, this week we had water dripping through the bathroom ceiling so I go up into the loft and find an inch long split at the base of the tank, close to where one of the pipes enters the tank. Surrounding timbers and the base the tank sits on where all soaked.
I can't for the life of me understand what's caused the split, if the pipe had been wrenched or taken a blow stressing the point it joins the tank, I could maybe understand but nothings fallen on the pipe and I certainly haven't touched it. However, something a friend of mine said to me has got me thinking - he said it's possible that hot water travelling up the expansion pipe from the hot water cylinder discharges into the cold water tank and if there was enough of it, it could raise the temp in cold water tank and potentially cause a split in 30-40 year old plastic.
Is that feasible?
Under what circumstances would water do this, is it when there is too much or too hot, water in the cylinder and it needs to go somewhere?
This has got me thinking that perhaps we produce too much hot water, currently the hot water is on 4hrs in the morning and 4hrs in the early evening and there's only 2 of us in the house.
Or am I confusing things, surely the boiler won't run continuously heating water, it'll run until the water gets to the temp set on the cylinder thermostat and stop?
We went on holiday for the first time in years for a week recently and one thought was that 8hrs of hot water was still being produced everyday (and not being used) so would that mean it would be discharged into the expansion pipe and subsequently the cold water tank?
Sorry for the long post.
Thanks for any clarification you can give.
Nick