View Single Post
  #3   Report Post  
Nigel Heather
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Thanks for the feedback.

Crimping or freezing the microbore was the only way I could see it possibly
working but even then doesn't seem practical.

The pipes come out of the wall, not the floor. He would have to remove a
lot plasterboard to reveal sufficient pipe to freeze or crimp before the
capping point (and that will leave me with a big decourating job). Also I
assume he would have to freeze it a long way back to stop it from melting
when he solders the end cap on.

As for prices:

£130 total
£100 labour
£30 for inhibitor, end caps and solder
(note that this does not include anything to make good the wall afterwards)

I appreciate he's got to make a living but it's a lot more than I was
expecting - if he'd said £80 he would have got the job but as it is I'm
going to have a go myself.

Cheers,

Nigel


"Lobster" wrote in message
...
Nigel Heather wrote:

I have a ground floor radiator that I want to permanently remove and make
good the wall as if it were never there.

I have a modern house so the raditor its attached to a dry cavity wall
and
uses 10mm microbore pipes.

I currently considering whether to do the work myself or just pay a
plumber
so I recently got a quote and it is this that has raised the questions.

The plumber said two things that seem to contradict each other.

(i) As the radiator in question has a drain valve he said that he could
remove the radiator and then seal the feed and return by just draining
that
radiator rather than the whole system.

(ii) The quote includes quite a hefty amount for rust inhibitor.

What I don't understand is

(a) How can you remove a radiator without draining the whole system.
Surely
as soon as the feed and return are disconnected water is going to gush
from
them especially as this is a ground floor radiator.


Not quite - he'll shut off the supply and return valves at the ends of the
radiator, then remove the radiator, at which point the radiator contents
need collecting in a bowl or something. That leaves the two radiator
tails still sticking up through the floor, which need removing. That can
be done by using a pipe-freezing kit like http://tinyurl.com/3nhjl, then
removing the valves, cutting off the tails and capping them off below the
floor.

Given that it's microbore, he might even do a bit of a bodge and just
squash the piping to block it, rather than freezing the pipes.

(b) If he only needs to drain the radiator itself why do I need all the
rust
inhibtor (given the system already has this).


Can anyone shed any light on this - is he telling porkies one way or
another.


If he was replacing the radiator, the existing inhibitor would be diluted
by a proportion equivalent to the volume of the radiator and in theory,
would need topping up. But he's 'forgotten' he's not replacing the rad,
so no more inhibitor is needed. He won't have forgotten the nice mark-up
he will make on the inhibitor though. What was the quote for that?
(Presumably you did tell him you already have inhibitor in?).

Avoiding having to replace the inhibitor is the main benefit of not
draining down the whole system, I would have thought!

He might tell you that you should put new inhibitor in every X years, and
while he's there... but if so, he should flush out the old first!

David