Help! Plumbing after burst water pipe

[spat82]

Hello, I am new to this forum and I am hoping someone can help or give me some advice, I will try to keep this simple..

1) a water main burst in our kitchen, flooding our flat. Plumber fixed this and said he thought it was due to a frozen pipe.

2) When the water was turned back on, there was a leak from the boiler that was not there before, this was fixed.

3) After plumber left, i flushed toilet fro first time and the mechanism inside the cistern (sp?) burst and also a leak at the back of the toilt started leaking. I called back plumber who fixed these.

4) When i first went to use the hot water, i realised there was not any. this only works when the heating is turned on, not at all if turned off. even when heating is on, the water temp is not great.

5) The electric shower had been working fine but just went to use it and now we have lost lots of power, it stays really hot, then goes really cold, no inbetween. after a while, it just went ice cold.

Now I have been in talk with insurance company as we need our flat flooring a kitchen re-fitted to due to the water damage. They said that we were not covered for the burst pipe itself, just the damage caused by the water from burst pipe. My questions are therefore..

1) Does anyone have any idea of what might be happening with our water etc , is the boiler damaged? just a setting needing changed? (i know zerop about plumbing)

2) do you think this can all be caused by the burst pipe. we have had no problems at all, and thean all of these within 10 days of the burst pipe. We would struggle to pay for new boiler, plumber etc but are hoping we can say that it was caused by the burst pipe and maybe get it on insurance?

sorry for the long message, we are just really stressed/upset/worried.

any help and advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[dontknowitall]

I'm going to look at a burst pipe tomorrow which I tried to fix a week ago. (Customer away last week in case you're wondering.)

I fixed the first hole but then found the whole length of pipe is damaged. I'm also expecting to find other problems too.

What I am saying is if all your whole water system froze then you will find leaks and things not working and all the problems you've mentioned could easily be from ice expanding pipes or valves or whatever and breaking them.

 

[spat82]

I'm going to look at a burst pipe tomorrow which I tried to fix a week ago. (Customer away last week in case you're wondering.)

I fixed the first hole but then found the whole length of pipe is damaged. I'm also expecting to find other problems too.

What I am saying is if all your whole water system froze then you will find leaks and things not working and all the problems you've mentioned could easily be from ice expanding pipes or valves or whatever and breaking them.

Hi, Thanks for this. Yes I suppose there could have been other parts in the system that were frozen. From the things I have described regarding the hot water and shower, do you think this could be easily fixed, or could it be a bigger issue?

do you think I would be able to say to the insurance people that the frozen pipe has damaged the system, and therefore, they should cover it?

again, thanks for your help.

 

[moony]

weird seems like a pressure spike never come across one - but for all the appliances to be effected, does seem strange.

boiler will prob be diaphram or divertor valve by the way

 

[dontknowitall]

Went to my water burst this morning. Fixed more of the pipe.

Turned water on and turned it off about 10 seconds later after hearing a whooshing noise. Now I find in a totally different area, the 28mm flow has been forced out of the hot water cylinder and a nearby 28mm/22mm/15mm tee has blown through all its soldering (yorkshire fitting).

Back on Monday with another plumber as I can see all sorts of other problems happening and feel this is going to be much easier (and cheaper for the customer) with two people. Hopefully get the hot water system fixed in the day and pressurise the heating system to see if the central heating has blown pipes too.

I talked to the customer about replumbing the whole house but told them it was probably better value to take a day trying to sort problems and during that time we'd be able to establish how long it might take to fix everything if we found further problems.

I've mentioned all this as it may help you with decisions.

I'd push the insurance company. If you bought insurance cover thinking it would cover this type of thing, then they should pay out. That's what insurance is for isn't it?!!

 

[stevetheplumber]

its normally the case that they only pay for the damage cause not the repair to the pipework however theyll often pay for finding where the leak is in the first place and any paneling removing thats needed to do the repair