F
fiddlestix70
Hello, This may be a long one, so please bear with me. I have an alpha combi boiler, but of late it has been struggling to heat the water (heating worked ok). I called in a plumber who changed the diaphragm, and it seemed a bit improved. But gradually it got worse, and it was a struggle to get any hot water at all. The pressure needle would go really high and then sometimes, while running the hot tap the needle would go mad, while the boiler made funny loud slurping noises, and then you could see the needle pressure drop below the green. Another plumber came and he ummed and ahhed and said, I know what it is, its the diverter valve. I will come back tomorrow and change it. He turned up at about 10am, and opened up the boiler again, and started ringing suppliers to get the diverter valve. He said the shop could not find one on the stock list but there maybe one of the shelf, and that they were too busy to look for him, so off he went to look in the shop round the corner for a valve. He came back 30ish minutes later empty handed. I know he said, I think there may be one in my garage. Off he goes again and after about 45 minutes, comes back with one.....Hallelujah, a miracle! He said he got it ages ago for a job that he didnt end up doing, so it was just lying around. Next, he puts on this new valve, changing some washers etc, but the water is still not right. I know what to try now, he says. I will clean out the heat exchanger with acid. It may be gunked up. He does this which takes about 5 minutes, and then puts it back in. I have no idea if he tested the water after this. Then he says its still not right, and starts faffing about saying he needs to descale some elements, but has run out of acid stuff. I need to go and buy some in Sainsburys, he says. So off he goes for about an hour. Comes back, and I assume descales something or other. Oh dear he is still not happy. Now he says he needs something called a dimister??? and he does not have one, so he will have to come back tomorrow or monday. He leaves about 5pm, so about 7 hours work (we live in sussex), or 5 if you take off all the time in Sainsburys, the plumb centre shop and going home to his garage (considering he said the day before he knew that it was the valve, I was a bit nonplussed as to why he did not check his garage before he came to mine, thereby saving a lot of time...but then time is money!!!!). Anyway after he left the water seemed fine. The pressure was stable and there was not more erratic needle behaviour. Me and my family were able to have several baths and showers with no problems. Please understand, I am happy to have hot water again, but dubious as to the length of time it took to fix. I suspect a lot of faffing went on to justify the high charge. He came back Monday with the new dimister??? thingy, but after trying it he said it didnt work. ( I had been hiding upstairs because I did not want to talk to him, so didnt really know what he was doing, but it only took him a few minutes. So he rang someone and came back to us (I had come out of hiding by now), and said it needed a new heat exchanger. I told him the water had been fine since he left so did not want to pay for any new parts or labour costs. He said he had just run the hot tap and it cut off after 30 seconds. I said we had run several baths and showers since he left saturday and that it had not cut out once. He said that shouldnt be the case and looked sceptical, but I think he could tell by my face that I was fed up, so he took his last check of £50 (now making a grand total of £380). I told my mum I was dubious and she asked me if he left a bill with a break down of costs, and i said no, so I am going to text him today to ask for one. I get very intimidated by tradesmen, but I do want to know if I was treated fairly, and if not then I will query the bill. This guy does a lot of work for a friend who co owns a property management company with her dad, and she gave me his number. He maybe charge her fairly because she puts a lot of work his way, or maybe he is not being fair to her, but because I assume she is not around to know how long he takes, and what he is doing when he is doing the work, (I assume its usually her tentants who are there, and they dont pay). Anyway any thoughts on this job would be greatly greatly appreciated.
