Plumbers from hell left this behind 

You bring so much knowledge and craft to the trade a real asset to your local community.

Man what i wouldnt do to have done my apprenticeship with this guy.simply class

This guy isn't a plumber, he's an engineering genius

What a nice world it would be if all heating engineers were as knowledgeable and dedicated as you.

This guy is a wizard, makes every plumber/ “heating engineer” I’ve ever hired look like complete clowns. Wish I could find tradesmen like this in my area 👌

I am always impressed when watching you, my father is 3 decades your senior and you fault find and rectify just as brilliantly as he does.

I love craftsmanship, and you demonstrate this time and again! Brilliant! 👏

Wow what a clever fella great video

Quality work mate. Brilliant in depth knowledge and fault finding.

Great video, very informative! Nice to see someone taking the extra time to fully sort the issues. Thanks for sharing.

This level of knowledge is super impressive.

I’m not a plumber, heating engineer or tradesman of any description but need a new central heating system so have been researching on YT. Had no idea heating could be so fascinating. What’s really clear though from watching quite a few of your videos is that there seem to be a lot of bodged and potentially dangerous installations out there. Was wanting to have a combi boiler installed to replace an old conventional system but am being told this is not really practical for a variety of reasons. Being retired and with fixed income it’s really worrying that I have no way of knowing whether the advice I’m being given is correct or whether the install will be efficient. Shame that everyone doesn’t work to your standards and have your integrity.

I've just watched this video again........what great work. The client's look stinking rich without a clue about building work.....I hope you charged them accordingly.

Great upload Si, this is what differs us heating engineers from the run of the mill plumbers. Fault finding can be a bit of a headache and yes sometimes it's better to start from scratch. Keep producing great content pal 👍.

I’ve watched a hell of a lot of heating engineers on RU-vid but your videos are by far my favourite. Your not speaking or explaining at 100mph, your not showing off your fancy tools or shiny expensive van trying to get free sponsorship or plugging any brands for free crap, your english is perfect and you explain things in such a simple way it makes it really easy to understand. Great workmanship, outstanding work ethic and all round top bloke, if I ever see you in the pub your next pint is on me🍺 keep up the great work my friend 👍

Hello Simon, Top video, would love to see more videos like this. Lot to learn from YOU. You are a TOP PLUMBER 👏🙌👍🤝 Regards from Liverpool

I always learn something when watching your videos. Great work.

That easybleed screw is so Cool.

Great to see your work.. briliant diagnostics and another great video.

Love seeing your confidence on this issue! A new subscriber from me! Watching from London! Thumbs up.

This is a Different level, brilliant.

Классный подход к работе! Молодец коллега!

great job

Great Vid as Normal . What a bag of nightmares 👍👍👍

Brilliant work, that was a great job.

Fantastic,great work.

Top job

Great video! Can I ask where you gained your knowledge to calculate flow rates, pipe sizing etc? Was it just over time or have you taken a course similar to the heat geek one? Thanks

I wish there was someone here in Northern Ireland like yourself I could employ:(

Flawless victory!

Brilliant video mate 👍

Well done👍

Good stuff , but only nitpick, could of left more slack on cylinder and immersion cable

I have no clue what's going on I'm not a tradesman but I enjoyed watching this

Great watch you’re obviously a very talented plumber/heating engineer that loves what you do, keep the great work up and keep the videos coming 👍👍

Hi. I must say i am really impressed with the level of your fault finding skills and knowledge. I am a plumber but still far from the level you are. I am planning to do a gas course as well. But i really wanted to ask you, how or what did you do to transition from a regular plumber/gas engineer to the genius you are at the moment. If you can give any tips how one can improve that much(reading material,courses etc). I wish you all the best. I always watch your videos and wish i was as good. Thank you for sharing you great work!

Very clever chap

This must be that building company that does extensions in mainly south London. The wiring and pipework are appalling. I recall they had Albanian plumbers who never had a clue.

Another great video. Thanks.

Such a good plumber, I’m qualified to the same level as you. but i don’t have a clue however, im half your age so time to learn my apprenticeship was mainly on installing boilers but now im on breakdowns so hopefully i can learn alot and get to your level nothing better than knowing how everything works and bamboozling customers with science aha great video👌

That reminds me of our central heating install 10 years ago. Old house with 8 flats, each with its own combi boiler. Owners decided they wanted to go green and install a central pellet boiler. Got a heating/cooling engineer to do all the planning and supervision. Held a tender with five bidders, all large plumbing/heating companies. Picked lowest bidder (for a reason - the second-lowest bidder admitted he was completely out of his comfort zone and couldn't be bothered and the third bidder's estimate was 25% higher than the lowest) and off we went. 100 kW pellet boiler, two 1500-litre tanks, four pumps for two main feeds (redundancy). Flow and return from the boiler were installed in abandoned chimney flues, which was fairly tricky and apparently because they couldn't get anything bigger through, one of the feeds serving three flats (80-100 m2 each) is 25 mm MLCP. We were promised compact transfer stations (basically a zone valve, an energy meter and a heat exchanger for DHW) in writing. What we actually got was all indivdual components screwed to the bathroom walls. A hydraulic separator, a bunch of gate valves, a circulation pump for the central heating and a DHW heat exchanger module with its own pump (the reason for the hydraulic separator). It looks an utter mess and we complained, getting excuse after excuse. After the third round I gave up. ("You can't get transfer stations for flow temperatures above 55 degrees C - found one for up to 90 degrees. "No, that's too small for the heat loss." Found one that went up to something like 24 kW whereas the original combi boilers were all 18 kW. "The main feeds are too small.") The main circulation pumps run at full power 24/7, 365 days a year because of the hydraulic separation. That makes them quite noisy and they consume 6000 kWh of electricity per year. Initially nothing worked because the main pumps were undersized. The contractor replaced them with Grundfos Magna 3s that didn't work either - the installer had to get a Grundfos engineer in because he couldn't set them up properly. DHW temperature fluctuated like crazy, and I'm talking 20°C swings. We complained, the installer claimed that was as good as it would get. "That's normal.". We got another plumber in (for other tasks) and asked him about the temperature swings and if he could compensate for them by installing a main thermostatic valve. His reply: "Well, I can install that for you but I won't, something's not right with that setup! Have a look at the manual and see if you can get it working as it should!". I grabbed the manual. These transfer stations measure cold water flow and temperature and CH flow rate and temperature and adjust the speed of the CH pump accordingly. I discovered that the minimum pump speed in the menu was set to 75%. What did that mean? At low DHW flow rates, like for showering or washing hands, the controls set the pump as low as possible but the CH flow rate was still way too high so water temperature went up, up, up, until the control went into emergency shutoff. The water got colder, colder, colder until the pump kicked back in, rinse and repeat. One flat had a crazy 30 l/min flow rate at the bath tap and around that the temperature was rock-solid, much below that and the pump couldn't modulate enough. Changing the minimum speed to 25% made the system work reasonably well from 6-7 l and up, which is still a bit much for showering but bearable. We told the installer about those settings and his reaction was priceless! "What, you need to change the settings on those??? The chap who sold me those never told me I had to do that!". We also had endless problems with leaks and ten years in I'd still describe the system as "sort of works". During the whole ordeal one of the owners passed away and then the pandemic came so plans to upgrade the system to something properly working haven't come into fruition yet.

One of the best heating engineer/plumbers l have seen at work clearly knows his stuff.

Excellent fault finding skills! Keep up the good work.

Nice work and good to see your attention to detail , but I'm interested to know how much did this cost the clients, and they spend any money on insulating their home?

Who the hell reuses a 15mm header tank feed for an unvented install?

Awesome 👏

Correct me if I'm wrong but the 2 port is a safety device as the unvented system is on a y plan, in the event of a failure it wouldn't overheat the cylinder.

Thoroughly enjoyed your diagnosis process. I'm in the US (New Jersey) a lot of the hot water based systems get removed to add central a/c. The other reason is to eliminate the cost and complexity of up grading to more efficient hot water systems. The down side is like your corrected system the zoned hot water system is soo much more efficient and quiet. It's always a struggle with $. I have been in the HVAC business for 40 years and the best technicians under stand how to "control" the medium what ever it is, water, steam, air and humidity. Nice to see a true technician best sales person any company can have.

I do enjoy your videos, and the standard of your pipework is top notch by the look of it - I bet with this channel you always have work queued up.

Nightmare. The builders who installed that system arrived on horses?

Only thing i don't understand is how u wired nest into UF heating? So nest is triggering boiler and pump or nest trigger's pump and 2 port and than 2 port is triggering boiler? Because if it's option 1 which is not an option then every time switch live goes ON, Uf pump would come ON. And how calculate how much flow u need to satisfy certain heat loss, or to say normally how much L/kw?

Great video

Just watching your videos, I so wish you were available to me close to Edinburgh to do a change from a BoilerMate 2000 20 year old system to a new Combi boiler...

Looks very neat.great work. What are the unused connections on the cylinder for?

The general standard of plumbing and heating in the UK has traditionally been bad. Having been born there and later moving over to Germany I was astounded by the general quality of installations were light years of the UK. Seems to be a combination of customers excepting sub-standard work & a "jobber" culture prominent in the plumbing trade. The general standard of what passes for acceptable is mind-numbing. Whenever I have to travel back to the UK on business I just dread using "reputable" chain hotels with poor showers and low pressure installations. The reason I think for this is the general low standard of training and cross knowledge in the trade. Added to the this is "well we have always done it this way" mentally. One saving grace was the influx of continental labour that gave the local "knowledge" a run for its money. Post Brexit that has largely dried up & so the UK now has plumbing matching it's previous "best of British" state of affairs.

Top engineer 👏 👌

What a great discovery this amazing channel I wish I know just the 5 % that you know, not just doing a perfect job but also teaching us in the meantime and the job is done sooo fast unbelievable. Thank you so much for sharing your vast knowledge and for your time.

Plumbing, heating and electrical are all trades with the majority of engineers (lol) being rough, lazy and pretty clueless. Yet everyone of them think they do a great job and do a full days work, it’s laughable.

The previous plumber is not there to defend himself...even if it was one single person...I get tired of hearing the 'cowboy' lecture

I’d love so much for you to come To my house and work out a better way to run my boiler /heating I live in the south UK so not far away! And it’s just not great !

The biggest disappointment I found watching this is that you don't cover North London.

Your knowledge of the wiring is far far better than some Sparky's I've hired over the years....you are a serious credit to the plumbing industry..... unfortunately as you are a plumber/gas man......I am legally obligated to say electrians are the better trade 😉

Builders cause many problems just build leave the plumbing to us 👍

Amazing!

Did you gain all of this knowledge working for companies or just working for yourself since your gas safe was achieved? Any courses you would recommend

thats a long pipe run -not easy

I have some very good migraine tablets for jobs like this :-)

top video as always your an absolute genius 👏🏽

Crazy equipment George the plumber USA 🇺🇸 love it coper pipe great job

Quality job! Do you ever loose any jobs or customer complaining because of the cost of the press fit fittings... its put me off press fit due to the fittings been around 10x the cost of endfeed.

Complete nightmare job that, must've taken a while just to identify those issues. Good work

I don't even know or do DIY but it's a real pleasure watching you and your obvious interest and love for your job. Many thanks.

You know your stuff, great video

Nice job mate, well sorted.

3 words for you, You are amazing! You have an academically sound mind. Knowing how to decipher an awkward situation like this requires high IQ. 👏 👏 👏.

This is what you go through for heating in the UK? Wow.

Another cracking video. I bet your customer was delighted with the result. Well done 👍

Excellent video. You know your 3 Tee rule which many ignore these days. Fault finding and problem prevention. Well done.

We had a plumber come and replace our old leaking unvented cylinder which had developed a crack on the underside to a new Stelflow. Previously my dad who has passed away had the cylinder put in the house. This new plumber fitted the new cylinder and made a complete balls up (on purpose to save him money). He didn't fit the new components that came with the cylinder (combi valve, port valve, tundish, thermostat) and even tried to use the old pipework with the new cylinder. However the pipe to the Temp/Pressure out has now come away and potentially a hazard. We have tried numerous times to get him to come complete the work but he has stalled with pathetic excuses such as "being too busy" or he has made 3 appointments and then cancelled at the last minute due to "an emergency". I'm now using my household insurance solicitors to send him a Legal Letter of Notice to pay up or we will take him to court for around £650 to fix everything. This is going to be an expensive mistake for him as now we will only accept the money. If the case goes to court, he will have a County Court Judgement against him and will potentially cause him problems with any future loans, Gas Safe, and Checkatrade (they will remove him from their register). His only option now is to cough up. The plumber who runs this RU-vid channel seems like a really nice scrupulous person. Sadly, there really are bad plumbers around as well.

I have a brand new Worcester Bosch life boiler installed in my house, and I’m getting lots of noise from the bypass ! How do you alter the pump in order to eliminate this issue ? It drives us mad

Beautiful work and extremely knowledgeable. Cant imagine how much you cost.

Make the hot water return the last tee back to the boiler

Can’t half a 3 port on unvented can you good job your changing it wouldn’t worry about putting a none return valve on main it’s not mandatory unless there’s a water meter 👍 I’d of done everything you would have hate going into jobs and someone’s fucked it right up have sort it out

Excellent job, your problem solving is absolutely stunning well done.

change the bypass valve.the inside is too slack.nothing to do with the pump

Well done at least you can learn about the various problems of the heating system.

I noticed all the loverly Red Wine 🍷 in the cellar by the boiler. Hopefully, you also gave the owners some advice on that too 🤭…

Would like to know what the total cost of installation, including labour?

Pretty copper runs in your videos.

You clever mo fo ! Amen 🙏

Impressed with all the work but sorting the boiler/bypass issues 👌👌👌👌👌👌 beautiful to watch mate

Clever work.

Great works.!!! Where did u buy that u-flow.? Can I have the link to buy it online.? Thank you a lot.

Excellent video. I have a noisy by-pass valve. Thanks for the explanation. I'll tell the engineer when they visit.

How do you no this much mate haha

with your fantastic expertise i wish you were in the colchester essex area to sort my electric heating boiler out

Dood this is epic. I learned loads!

Your knowledge is unreal

The cellar looks just like my last house a Victorian terrace in Kent.

This video has no relevance to me at all. But, I can’t help but watch, like many of your other videos. It’s like watching an artist at work, almost brings a tear to my eye. Normally, I find tradespeople so frustrating - condescending, unreliable, and not especially competent. You, sir, are an absolute rarity! Bravo!