Plumber fined after causing an explosion...

[AlexGas]

Plumber fined after causing explosion at domestic property | Media centre - HSE

 

[Ch4 plumbing]

Destroyed someone's house and could have killed them......£500 pound fine that seems a little "light"!

 

[joni os]

Should have disconnected immersion heater, but not being part P wanted to stay legal.

 

[Rickster123]

Sounds nasty lucky he wasn't looking at a death and prison sentence.

 

[Best]

Wonder what exactly he did? It says it was a copper cylinder.
Assuming it was a vented cylinder I guess he turned the feed off to it and removed & plugged the vent pipe going into attic. He mustn't have a clue

 

[joni os]

Without knowing full facts we should maybe reserve judgement. many cold water feeds can be isolated by gate valve in airing cupboard, and not getting hot water the householder could have closed this when plumber left it open. Also with no hot water available, why immersion was on is a mystery. Add to that, the thermo. cut out was faulty or system would not have boiled.

 

[Best]

Vent must have been capped though.

 

[Billy Bob Bob]

for it too rupture,vent must have been capped as already stated,luckily no one died,guy should go down for gross stupidity

 

[joni os]

Capping vent would be an unnecessary act of stupidity, which leads one to wonder if pipe was bent over and pushed aside by chippy. Cylinders are reputed to implode under vacuum conditions but no one gets prosecuted.

 

[hammers4spanner]

Some things i read here 1, The plumber inexperienced to take the job on or was never trained properly in the first instance and assumed that was correct procedure.

2, The customer could have also been to tight to spend the correct amount of money to get the job done properly.

 

[snowhead]

The way I read it is;

Existing was Cold Storage tank in loft connected to vented cylinder.

Cold Storage tank was removed, the existing cylinder converted to unvented except it had no Exp vessel or Pressure relief.

Burnley Magistrates’ Court heard how, in May 2014, Lee Barrett failed to put in place the appropriate safety devices when removing an existing water tank for a loft conversion. He had, effectively, created a closed water system combined with an old immersion heater, which allowed water to heat to 100ºC in a copper cylinder.

 

[Best]

The way I read it is;

Existing was Cold Storage tank in loft connected to vented cylinder.

Cold Storage tank was removed, the existing cylinder converted to unvented except it had no Exp vessel or Pressure relief.

Burnley Magistrates’ Court heard how, in May 2014, Lee Barrett failed to put in place the appropriate safety devices when removing an existing water tank for a loft conversion. He had, effectively, created a closed water system combined with an old immersion heater, which allowed water to heat to 100ºC in a copper cylinder.

It does seem he must have just converted a copper cylinder to unvented, but surely no vented copper cylinder is capable of being converted and be safe. The proper unvented copper units were very heavy built & had all the extra connections for safety valve etc.
I think the plumber wasn't really up to the job. Sort of bloke you get coming with a builder perhaps.

 

[snowhead]

It would be interesting to see if they investigate any of his other previous work