We were asked to look at the hot water system at a big house in Gosforth and found a terrible mismatch of poorly configured and installed high pressure unvented plumbing.

Virtually none of the pipework is secured to any of the structure and the electrics are politely dangerous, never mind prone to failure.

What was called for was for a complete removal, redesign and reinstalling of the cylinders with new valves and pipework.

The two cylinders had a combined capacity of 500L but when we tested them the hot water ran out after 183L. Clearly things weren’t right and so we set about proposing a complete removal and reinstall.

With the clients at home more often now due to the lockdown we needed to ensure they had heating and hot water at the end of each day. Consequently we organised to remove one cylinder at a time and replumb it while leaving the other cylinder able to keep the bathrooms going.

Having removed the left hand cylinder it was possible to built a proper level base and start rerouting the pipework around the walls and down the back so that they could be effectively supported to prolong their service life.

The right hand cylinder was then moved to the left position to enable the repiping to continue while keeping services on in the house.

While we had access to the pipework behind the cylinder this was insulated and pressure tested before the remaining work was done to the right hand cylinder pipework which included the repositioning of the pump and electrical control box.

This was again tested for safe operation and the right hand cylinder refitted into the very tight space!

And that’s it folks! The cylinders were plumbed to run in series so no issues with balancing the two cylinders working against each other and now that all of the pipework is firmly fixed to the walls it should last a good century or two!