I would have found it quite reassuring during the great freeze
if I have known the temperature of the water in the tank in my attic,
and also the depth of the water in the tank.

I wonder if there is any simple wireless device
that would give one this information?

Incidentally, I happened to be in Italy during the great freeze
(it was only a little freeze there)
and I was struck again by the fact that as far as I can see
no-one except the UK (and Ireland) seems to use attic tanks.

Are they legally required in the UK?
I seem to recall that it used to be illegal
to attach toilets directly to the mains?


--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

Nothing to stop you using a combination cylinder. That is a HW-
cylinder & CW-cylinder "bolted together" and located in a bathroom
cupboard or similar.

The downside is the height of the CW cylinder isn't much above the HW
cylinder, they recommend about 3ft above the highest tap, but in
practice it can be hard to get much above 1ft unless you go for a very
tall combi-cylinder combination.

You can buy float switches re "overfull" if that's what you mean. You
can epoxy a temp sensor to the tank, simple min-max thermometer with
long lead. I suspect one watch to for is the ballcock outlet freezing,
then problems really begin :-)

On Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:46:47 +0000, Timothy Murphy wrote:

I would have found it quite reassuring during the great freeze
if I have known the temperature of the water in the tank in my attic,
and also the depth of the water in the tank.

I wonder if there is any simple wireless device
that would give one this information?

Incidentally, I happened to be in Italy during the great freeze
(it was only a little freeze there)
and I was struck again by the fact that as far as I can see
no-one except the UK (and Ireland) seems to use attic tanks.

Are they legally required in the UK?
I seem to recall that it used to be illegal
to attach toilets directly to the mains?

I think it was (is?) only direct flushing toilets that were prohibited -
i.e. ones without a cistern.

SteveW

Timothy Murphy
wibbled on Friday 15 January 2010 14:46


I would have found it quite reassuring during the great freeze
if I have known the temperature of the water in the tank in my attic,
and also the depth of the water in the tank.

I wonder if there is any simple wireless device
that would give one this information?

Incidentally, I happened to be in Italy during the great freeze
(it was only a little freeze there)
and I was struck again by the fact that as far as I can see
no-one except the UK (and Ireland) seems to use attic tanks.

Are they legally required in the UK?
I seem to recall that it used to be illegal
to attach toilets directly to the mains?



You may attach a toilet cistern directly to the mains - it's often done.

--
Tim Watts

Icicles - nature's way of pinpointing all the leaks in your guttering...

On Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:46:47 +0000
Timothy Murphy wrote:


I would have found it quite reassuring during the great freeze
if I have known the temperature of the water in the tank in my attic,
and also the depth of the water in the tank.

I wonder if there is any simple wireless device
that would give one this information?

Incidentally, I happened to be in Italy during the great freeze
(it was only a little freeze there)
and I was struck again by the fact that as far as I can see
no-one except the UK (and Ireland) seems to use attic tanks.

Are they legally required in the UK?
I seem to recall that it used to be illegal
to attach toilets directly to the mains?



All my toilets are attached to the mains. I don't have a loft tank.

Cumbria is still (regrettably) part of GoredoomLand, part of the Uck.

R.

Tim W wrote:
Timothy Murphy
wibbled on Friday 15 January 2010 14:46

I would have found it quite reassuring during the great freeze
if I have known the temperature of the water in the tank in my attic,
and also the depth of the water in the tank.

I wonder if there is any simple wireless device
that would give one this information?

Incidentally, I happened to be in Italy during the great freeze
(it was only a little freeze there)
and I was struck again by the fact that as far as I can see
no-one except the UK (and Ireland) seems to use attic tanks.

Are they legally required in the UK?
I seem to recall that it used to be illegal
to attach toilets directly to the mains?



You may attach a toilet cistern directly to the mains - it's often done.

all mine are.

On Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:46:47 +0000, Timothy Murphy wrote:
I wonder if there is any simple wireless device
that would give one this information?

Probably. I'm jst going to hard-wire all the sensors for our place (but
I've got the benefit of a big basement with no finished ceiling (yet) to
run the bulk of the wiring through.

Incidentally, I happened to be in Italy during the great freeze (it was
only a little freeze there)
and I was struck again by the fact that as far as I can see no-one
except the UK (and Ireland) seems to use attic tanks.

Well, I suppose lots of countries have single-storey houses (because they
have more space so can make a home with a bigger footprint), and various
countries do forced-air heating by default rather than water-filled rads,
so there's less of a plumbing industry to make use of.

We've got a 2-storey place here in the US, but there's no pipework at all
on the top floor; there's enough room to just do all of that at
ground-level and use mains (actually, well-pump) pressure to 'drive'
everything.

It's cold here - winter lasts a long time. First snow was back in
October, and we'll be thawing out somewhere around April/May. I'd need
some pretty serious insulation on any kind of attic water tank.

cheers

Jules

In article ,
Timothy Murphy writes:

I would have found it quite reassuring during the great freeze
if I have known the temperature of the water in the tank in my attic,
and also the depth of the water in the tank.

I monitor the temperature in my loft.
That's also used to switch on the heating if it drops to near freezing.
I don't think the tank temperature is interesting. It tends to be the
pipes which freeze, having much less thermal capacity than the tank.
The pipe feeding the ballvalve can be particularly vulnerable, and
often isn't insulated well for the last bit into the tank. I've seen
the result of freezing destroy the plastic valve components, so the
valve then trickles continuously into the tank on thawing.

Why do you want to monitor the level?
In case it goes too high, or rather low?

I wonder if there is any simple wireless device
that would give one this information?

Incidentally, I happened to be in Italy during the great freeze
(it was only a little freeze there)
and I was struck again by the fact that as far as I can see
no-one except the UK (and Ireland) seems to use attic tanks.

Are they legally required in the UK?

No. However, they are normally specified for business premises
because if you lose the mains water for any reason, you are
pretty much bound to send everyone home unless you have tanks
that can keep toilets working. When you are designing a critical
facility (in my experience, things like 24x7 datacentres), you
need to size the tank to provide enough water for the minimum
acceptable staffing level for long enough that you can arrange
manual top-ups or alternative facilities.

I seem to recall that it used to be illegal
to attach toilets directly to the mains?

As others have said, no. They're often tank fed because that
makes the ball-valve quieter, although there are better
designs nowadays which aren't so noisy with high pressure.

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

Andrew Gabriel wrote:
Timothy Murphy writes:

no-one except the UK (and Ireland) seems to use attic tanks.

I think it's because we (or rather, the Victorians) got there first. At
the time the mains wasn't too reliable, so a tank in the roof to provide
a local head of pressure within the house made sense. We've largely
stuck with it ever since because builders and plumbers are conservative
beasts.

Are they legally required in the UK?

No. Plenty of people have mains pressure water - I do. The two routes
are combi boilers, which heat water on demand as it passes through and
make sense for smaller houses, and mains-pressure tanks which are
similar to traditional tanks but are kept under pressure by the incoming
mains instead of a header tank. Of the two I would think the combi
boiler is more common at the moment.

No. However, they are normally specified for business premises
because if you lose the mains water for any reason, you are
pretty much bound to send everyone home

The latter part is true, but I'm not convinced that tanks in businesses
are the norm. The site where I work (maybe 3000 people) had to close for
this reason last year. (It also provided a useful test for the Business
Continuity folks's plans for epidemics or what have you - apparently it
all worked fairly smoothly)

I seem to recall that it used to be illegal
to attach toilets directly to the mains?

Don't think so. It did used to be illegal to use ones which employed a
valve instead of a siphon, since a leaking valve would waste water. That
went out in the 90s, I think, in the name of European harmonisation.

Pete

On Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:00:16 +0000 (UTC),
(Andrew Gabriel) wrote:

I don't think the tank temperature is interesting. It tends to be the
pipes which freeze, having much less thermal capacity than the tank.
The pipe feeding the ballvalve can be particularly vulnerable, and
often isn't insulated well for the last bit into the tank. I've seen
the result of freezing destroy the plastic valve components, so the
valve then trickles continuously into the tank on thawing.

Back in 1986, in mid winter it didn't happen like that. The house was
unoccupied for a few months prior to us moving in and it had got
really cold. The wood burner and fireplace was out of service until
chimney work could be completed in the spring, the huge internal mass
was stone cold, there was no central heating and there were only a
couple of external LPG tank fed gas fires downstairs a single 2kW
electric fan heater upstairs with a 1kW strip heater on the wall of
the bathroom. The outside temp dropped to around -15 deg C. The gas
fires were run round the clock with the hall door open downstairs, and
the fan heater ran all the time upstairs - despite that we were going
mildly hypothermic at night with icy hair etc.

Then the hot water stopped coming through the taps (economy 7
immersion). Went into loft to check and we had 4 inches of solid ice
as a crust in the hot water header tank, but surprisingly the feed
pipe didn't ever freeze solid despite only a basic level of insulation
with a single wrap of felt based insulation, the heat leaking from the
airing cupboard below helped I suspect. The ballcock was full of
slush though.

Had to use numerous kettles of boiling water to melt a line down the
ice block, then smashed it with a lump hammer, hauled it out bit by
bit down the loft hatch in a hessian sack and left it in the bath to
'melt' It was that cold in the house, remnants of the ice were still
there nearly a week later - no one wanted a bath and we were well past
caring on the odour front!

It's by far the coldest I've ever been in the UK.


--

On Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:40:13 +0000, Mike wrote:

... and left it in the bath to 'melt' It was that cold in the house,
remnants of the ice were still there nearly a week later ...

Seems a bit daft to leave great chunks of ice soaking up heat in a
house that is already not warm enough.

--
Cheers
Dave.

Cumbria is still (regrettably) part of GoredoomLand, part of the Uck.

R.

TOF - you'll enjoy this one then.

The Scottish Rock Garden Club has Cumbria as part of its
organisation. Correspondence to Cumbria members is addressed
'England' - all other English members are in 'Rest of England'.

Rob

On Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:03:57 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Liquorice"
wrote:

On Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:40:13 +0000, Mike wrote:

... and left it in the bath to 'melt' It was that cold in the house,
remnants of the ice were still there nearly a week later ...

Seems a bit daft to leave great chunks of ice soaking up heat in a
house that is already not warm enough.


dubious thermodynamics mode

It was that cold we were huddling round the ice to warm ourselves up


/dubious thermodynamics mode


--