Heat Store Sequel: Mad DIY boffin Meets Reasonable Woman

In my last post I described how a heat store works but nothing about its installation. This was thought unnecessary as that’s the plumber’s job and is no more than pulling out the old stuff and routing a few more pipes etc. Unfortunately with a slightly bigger tank than expected ( due to a tripartite combination of errors between myself, plumber and supplier) the airing cupboard door had to be removed and I will have to fit another one. I had thought this would be necessary from the very outset. Unfortunately the fitting of such a large new tank led to delays and an extra day’s work. By the end of the second day we all a bit tired and so when I raised the question of the anti-corrosion additive the advice was that all I needed to do was add a half a litre of the stuff.

Fine I thought, I will trot off and get some. Unfortunately the smallest quantity was 4 litres at £20. This put me on warning so a call to the supplier soon showed that I had a problem. The requirement for a tank of our size was that 6% of additive was needed. A quick calculation showed that this came out at 15 litres. After a stunned silence the supplier said the installer should have put this in and if I bought it I could deduct £80 from the final bill. I am tempted to deduct a charge for the following labour as well, but on the basis that no experience is a wasted experience, I shall delude myself into thinking that value was had.

The next problem was to make room for this extra liquid while not reducing the 6%. Firstly I siphoned out the contents of the small header tank. Since there was only about 2 inches of clearance bailing it out or pushing down a bucket so that the ovewrflow di its job, was not on. The siphon worked well but the amount removed was about four litres out. The next move was to fit a hose pipe to the drain tap and measure a drain off of about 4 litres. All these moves were intended to keep the waste of hot water ( at 56c by the end of the day) to a minimum. This worked well.

The next stage was to deliver the 15 litres to the header tank Enter the mad DIY boffin. The sensible method would be to decant about a litre at a time by means of a squeezee lemonade bottle but the scientific solutions was the fix a small pump to the Black and Decker Drill and hey presto 15 litres are delivered without difficulty. For this purpose I needed the hep of the reasonable woman. The first attempt failed as I had connected the inlet and outlet spigots the wrong way round. Result, loads of bubbles in the fluid which should have been speeding its way aloft. A quick, but splashy interlude, resulted in nothing. Tried to prime the pump; same result.

The next suggestion was to take a hose pipe upstairs and get gravity on our side. Assurances to the reasonable woman that the stair carpet would be safe and that there would be no more splashy intervals failed. The reasonable woman suggested the squeezee bottle solution and produced 2 such bottles but only 750 cls. However, 18 or so deliveries later the header tank was filled with the protective fluid and the spare litre was delivered to the back boiler header tank upstairs.

Mad DIY boffin was then put on mopping duties while reasonable woman retired to the lounge to watch one of her detective dramas. Shimples.