Background
My mum's boiler recently stopped working. It turned out the fan motor had failed. This was quickly and efficiently fixed. After the repairs were completed i noticed that the casing was not fitting correctly, something i had first noticed several months earlier after the boiler received its annual service.
This project covers one of my pet hates. Supposedly professional tradesman do a job that they have been well paid to do, they make a mistake and then rather than admit it and set about repairing it, they perform some sort of botch job and crudely cover it up leaving something that a poorly qualified DIY'er would be ashamed of letting anyone see. I find it quite ironic that these tradesmen are qualified and will show you their safety registration and identity card and then leave having damaged some one else's property. If it was not for the fact that i had all the service records and could identify who was responsible i could have taken the view that all tradesmen were untrustworthy.
This demonstrates the somewhat unprofessional attitude of the guilty party in allowing his fellow tradesmen to come under suspicion which is only confirmed by the standard of the work they performed. The company he was employed by has since gone out of business.
I decided to investigate further and what i came across was actually quite shocking. At some point in the past, i keep all the service records so i have a good idea when the problem occurred, the boiler was removed from the wall and dropped on it's right side damaging parts of the frame. As a result the cover would not sit correctly on the frame because brackets were damaged, broken off and then botched back in place.
This project covers one of my pet hates. Supposedly professional tradesman do a job that they have been well paid to do, they make a mistake and then rather than admit it and set about repairing it, they perform some sort of botch job and crudely cover it up leaving something that a poorly qualified DIY'er would be ashamed of letting anyone see. I find it quite ironic that these tradesmen are qualified and will show you their safety registration and identity card and then leave having damaged some one else's property. If it was not for the fact that i had all the service records and could identify who was responsible i could have taken the view that all tradesmen were untrustworthy.
This demonstrates the somewhat unprofessional attitude of the guilty party in allowing his fellow tradesmen to come under suspicion which is only confirmed by the standard of the work they performed. The company he was employed by has since gone out of business.
I decided to investigate further and what i came across was actually quite shocking. At some point in the past, i keep all the service records so i have a good idea when the problem occurred, the boiler was removed from the wall and dropped on it's right side damaging parts of the frame. As a result the cover would not sit correctly on the frame because brackets were damaged, broken off and then botched back in place.
This picture shows two screws securing the front panel mounting bracket in place. One is a 10mm self tapping screw the other is a 50mm wood screw!. The screws were installed by a service technician and are intended to hold two pieces of sheet metal together. Neither screws should be present, The two pieces of metal should be riveted together but these obviously broke when the boiler was dropped. The two screws were used in the attempted repair!
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This picture shows the length of the wood screw used to secure the bracket to the side panel. Worryingly it came perilously close to the pressure gauge pipe behind the panel.
The damage to the side panel lower lip can also be seen. At this stage i had already done some work to straighten out the edge in preparation to align it and putting it back into position to support the lower casing edge. |
This picture shows the damage that occurred to the plastic front panel when the metal mounting bracket on the side broke off.
Fortunately the damage was not significant.
The first job was to remove the inappropriate screws and clean up the holes. The service technician who did the damage decided to drill an extra hole so i decided to use it. The bracket was original riveted in place so i decided to use the same method. In this picture the bracket has been clamped in place and the rivets are ready to be secured in place.
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In this picture the three rivets have been secured in place. One more than on the left hand side bracket but i decided to make use of a hole that had been left when the original 'botched' repair had been attempted.
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Unfortunately when the boiler was dropped it loosened the rivets of an internal bracket mounted at the bottom edge of the side panel. The work i did straightening the lower edge of the side panel probably contributed to the further loosening of the bracket rivets so i decided to drill out the rivets and replace them.
Here the bracket has been aligned and clamped in place before the rivets were secured.
Before the bracket was fixed in place the case was test fitted several times to ensure the lower lip of the side panel had been correctly adjusted.
This shows the completed repair work.
1. The front panel support bracket has been secured in place with three new rivets.
2. The internal lower bracket has been re-secured in place with two new rivets.
3. The side panel lower lip has been repaired so that the outer casing now sits correctly without vibrating.