Warning - Check your immersion heater

rogerblack

Kernel_Sanders wrote: »

In that article it states a fault in its immersion heater had allowed the cold water tank to fill with scalding water and that The hot water flowed into the cold water tank in the loft until eventually that too was filled with boiling water.
The author cannot know how the system works because (she?) doesn't realise that it was just the the heat that migrated from the cylinder up through the gate valve.

Heat doesn't move up pipes significantly.
The only case it will do this is if there is steam bubbling in the pipe, so you get a backwards/forwards flow of steam/water - though there may be no net flow.

A 10cm length of 22mm pipe - about 60mm^2 cross-sectional area - will pass 24W with 100C between the ends.