Help - daughter pulled heater off wall!

Minerva69

We have a wall heater at the top of our stairs which we think is connected to the central heating system. We think it was installed by the person who lived here before us, it's a weird thing that only works when you plug it into an electrical socket and switch it on, but it is also connected to what look like water pipes (which get hot when the central heating comes on).

We have never used it but our young daughter accidentally pulled it off the wall last night, and now it's only being held up by being connected to the water pipes, so we are worried it's going to start leaking. We need to get it removed but don't think we can do it ourselves. We don't know where the stop valve to turn the water off is in our house, we've looked everywhere and can't find it.

Can anyone offer any advice? Should we try and get a plumber or a heating engineer to come and remove it? We live in Bradford so if anybody can recommend somebody that would be good. Thanks.

C_Mababejive

Its probably a fanned convector...quite a useful and efficient appliance for heating. It is likely to have some built in isolation valves on the two hot water pipes. These may not be evident until the casing is removed. If you still want to use it,you need to have it resecured to the wall. Potentially this could be diy..if not> plumber.

Minerva69

C_Mababejive wrote: »

Its probably a fanned convector...quite a useful and efficient appliance for heating. It is likely to have some built in isolation valves on the two hot water pipes. These may not be evident until the casing is removed. If you still want to use it,you need to have it resecured to the wall. Potentially this could be diy..if not> plumber.

Thanks very much for that. We just want to remove it, it's at the top of the stairs, there is nowhere to plug it in and we've never used it. I'm not sure what isolation valves are, I've attached some photos so maybe you could tell me if we could do it ourselves? It looks like there is something at the top of the silver coloured valve that could be undone with a spanner, but we don't want water leaking out if we undo them!

Front of the heater (the pipes are bottom right):




Close-up of the pipes from the left:



Close-up of the pipes from the right (you can see the electrical wire but it isn't plugged in):

Tucker

The centre of the silver compression fitting is an isolation valve that you can turn 90 degrees with a flat screwdriver to close it off.

However, if you don't know what you are doing, I wouldn't attempt to remove it. Get someone in to do it.

There will be water in the unit that will need draining, so you could make a mess if you are not careful. You could also probably do with dealing with the remaining pipes rather than just shutting the valve and leaving them sticking out of the skirting. Again, one for the plumber....

ormus

yes i would remove it too. taking the just unit off will leave the two tail pipes and valves.
you really need to get under the floor to tidy the pipes up.
(cut and cap off).

Inactive

It appears to have a cable entering near to the pipes, this will probably be connected somewhere as well.

Clive_Woody

You might want to run a duster under there too.....

Barneysmom

Why don't you just hang it back up again?

Inactive

Clive_Woody wrote: »

You might want to run a duster under there too.....

I was going to say that I am surprised that the cob webs didn't stop it from falling off, but I am far too polite.:D

Minerva69

Inactive wrote: »

It appears to have a cable entering near to the pipes, this will probably be connected somewhere as well.

As I mentioned in post #3, you can see the electrical cable but it isn't plugged in, it's not connected to anything as it has to be plugged into a mains socket for the heater to work. The other end of that cable in the photo comes out underneath the carpet and has a plug on the end of it.

Barneysmom wrote: »

Why don't you just hang it back up again?

As I said, we never use it, there is nowhere to plug it into. We can't get to the back of it to hang it back up, we'd need to drill holes into the wall and put wall plugs in. We're worried if we touch the heater the water pipes will bend/break as it's all very wobbly at the moment.

Clive_Woody wrote: »

You might want to run a duster under there too.....

Inactive wrote: »

I was going to say that I am surprised that the cob webs didn't stop it from falling off, but I am far too polite.:D

Hmm, thanks for those helpful replies :huh: Maybe I've got more important things to do like look after my sick husband and worry about my Dad who is seriously ill in hospital. But when I get round to it I'll be sure to get the duster out

elfen

Get it stable (put something on the other side so it can't move, and watch for leaks. Then see ifyou have a DIY or plumbery handy friend who can help, get a pan to put underneath (or a washing up bowl) an turn the valve (thing that looks like a screw with the slot in it) and hopefully no water comes out.