Leak

15th December 2001

On the evening of the 14th the central heating system depressurised and shut down.
The system then refused to stay at its working pressure. We had a leak...
The probable location of the failure was determined and we cut up the floor to fix it...
Nightmare...

It had seemed a little over the top to measure and mark the location of each of the pipe joints on a plan, but it paid off.
Unfortunately the first joint that we opened up was OK.

The second joint that we uncovered had come apart.
After some examination it seemed that it should never have held pressure at all, yet it had held up to the multiple pressure tests and system test runs - all of which occurred before the floor was laid.
Of course it failed at the worst possible time. Ah well...

The third board needed to be cut up because it was impossible to fix the joint without being able to hold the pipe on the right hand side of the joint.

Luckily the boards that we had to cut up to fix the leak were all quite short.
We removed the remaining boards and prepared them for replacing with new boards.
The new boards had the tongues and grooves 'adjusted' slightly so that they could be fitted in without taking any more of the floor apart...

The final result is that you'd never know it had happened...