- Joined
- Nov 28, 2009
- Messages
- 14,762
- Reaction score
- 951
A tale if how different tradesman "operate"
A few years back I did an unusual CU change over on the West coast, a 2 hour journey for me, because he could not find anyone local to do it. Because of some unusual loads, mainly a 50A electric boiler, I fitted an SBS CU.
So that guy phones me. He now has a heating problem, the boiler is not working. He has tried to solve it with the local heating "engineer" who has spectacularly failed to get it working so now he wanted me to have a look. Well I did solve it, all by 2 telephone calls and looking at some pictures he sent me by email. Here is what happened:
One day the heating stopped working. The electric boiler has a "call for heat" light that was no longer coming on. The "heating engineer" replaced the time clock. That did not fix it. So he "diagnosed" the boiler was faulty. £1000 later and he had fitted a new boiler and lo and behold it still did not work. For some strange reason the customer paid the £1000 and still had a non working heating system and a new boiler replacing the old one that was almost certainly not broken.
From the photographs he sent me, there is a relay installed next to the boiler. It's purpose is to inhibit the boiler from operating when the shower is on to prevent overloading the supply. It did not take long to determine that was stuck "on" so permanently inhibiting the boiler from operating.
Which comes to part 2,, "what other work have you had done recently" Yes he had a local guy change the isolating switch for the shower, but he got it wrong, and the pair of wires to the relay are now connected to the feed side of the shower switch not the output side of the shower switch hence the relay permanently on inhibiting the boiler.
If only the customer had phoned me first. But again why don't they join the dots, the heating stopped working as soon as the shower switch was replaced. Not rocket science, though I suppose most would not think the two were in any way linked.
But how does the guy who unnecessarily replaced the boiler sleep at night. I would be VERY embarrassed to make such a big miss diagnosis,
A few years back I did an unusual CU change over on the West coast, a 2 hour journey for me, because he could not find anyone local to do it. Because of some unusual loads, mainly a 50A electric boiler, I fitted an SBS CU.
So that guy phones me. He now has a heating problem, the boiler is not working. He has tried to solve it with the local heating "engineer" who has spectacularly failed to get it working so now he wanted me to have a look. Well I did solve it, all by 2 telephone calls and looking at some pictures he sent me by email. Here is what happened:
One day the heating stopped working. The electric boiler has a "call for heat" light that was no longer coming on. The "heating engineer" replaced the time clock. That did not fix it. So he "diagnosed" the boiler was faulty. £1000 later and he had fitted a new boiler and lo and behold it still did not work. For some strange reason the customer paid the £1000 and still had a non working heating system and a new boiler replacing the old one that was almost certainly not broken.
From the photographs he sent me, there is a relay installed next to the boiler. It's purpose is to inhibit the boiler from operating when the shower is on to prevent overloading the supply. It did not take long to determine that was stuck "on" so permanently inhibiting the boiler from operating.
Which comes to part 2,, "what other work have you had done recently" Yes he had a local guy change the isolating switch for the shower, but he got it wrong, and the pair of wires to the relay are now connected to the feed side of the shower switch not the output side of the shower switch hence the relay permanently on inhibiting the boiler.
If only the customer had phoned me first. But again why don't they join the dots, the heating stopped working as soon as the shower switch was replaced. Not rocket science, though I suppose most would not think the two were in any way linked.
But how does the guy who unnecessarily replaced the boiler sleep at night. I would be VERY embarrassed to make such a big miss diagnosis,
