A
architect1337
Just after a bit of advice. My elderly father/mother in law had a pair of radiators fitted in April 2010 as both were leaking (pin hole). They came home day after Boxing Day to find water pouring through the ceiling. Upstairs, one of the new radiators was seen to be leaking badly from within the radiator itself i.e. not a joint or valve leak - actually out of the bottom left corner of the rad metalwork. They turned off the valve and this slowed down the leak to a drip. They have a gravity heating system (tank etc). The plumber who fitted the rad charged them about 100 quid plus VAT for each rad (plus labour) and bought the radiators from the local Plumb Centre. He did comment at the time that a power wash should be done as the water was very black but they chose not to.
The question is - should the radiator have failed so quickly due to corrosion or was it genuinely faulty. Scratching away at the bottom corner to remove the white coating showed the metal work to be black. Have any of you experienced such quick corrosion. I'm guessing the water would have to be very acidic to cause this sort of damage so quickly (nine months).
I have now told them not to be tight and get a power flush done but there is the obvious risk of this causing more damage if the pipework is not up to scratch. The house is reasonably old (about 60 years I would guess) but if this has caused two rads to fail and the replaced rad has also failed, either they have a lot of bad luck or it's likely they will have to replace all the rads after a power flush. What do you think?
The question is - should the radiator have failed so quickly due to corrosion or was it genuinely faulty. Scratching away at the bottom corner to remove the white coating showed the metal work to be black. Have any of you experienced such quick corrosion. I'm guessing the water would have to be very acidic to cause this sort of damage so quickly (nine months).
I have now told them not to be tight and get a power flush done but there is the obvious risk of this causing more damage if the pipework is not up to scratch. The house is reasonably old (about 60 years I would guess) but if this has caused two rads to fail and the replaced rad has also failed, either they have a lot of bad luck or it's likely they will have to replace all the rads after a power flush. What do you think?