In article ,
charles writes:
my father died in October 1995 ands sicne the house probably wouldn't be
sold until the spring, I fitted a frost stat to the CH to stop things
freezing up. Unfortuately, the outside temp fell to about -20C on a few
overnights and the whole contents of the water tank in the loft froze
solid. Luckily a neigbour cam in and turned of the water before any damage
occured.

One grandmother died in 1995, and it took a couple of years to sell
the house. I left the heating on low and the loft hatch part open so
some of the heat went up there. Water was turned off, so if something
did go wrong, damage was limited to a tank full of water. Topped up the
CH header tank from the cold water storage tank a few times, bailing
the water with an old saucepan. If I'd know it was going to take this
long, might have drained the whole water system instead. The next
owners ripped it all out anyway, except the radiator pipework (the
rest was mainly iron).

If you leave the loft hatch open, you need to check it's not causing
condensation up there. If the house is unoccupied and ventilated,
it shouldn't.

When we did eventually turn the water back on, I found the plastic
guts of one of the tank ball valves had been damaged by freezing, so
it didn't fully close anymore. As the water had been off at the time,
it didn't matter.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]