Boiler / Material Engineers some help please.

Moneybox

Please can anyone help?

A rouge trader removed an olive from a pilot light joint in a boiler during service (negligence I hope rather than intent) causing a small controlled gas leak that sooted up boiler in 16 weeks. I did question at the time why they were dissembling the pilot light on a service when there was no sooting. They then pressurised the customer to have a new boiler fitted. They were refused and Gassafe a U.K. governing body inspected and condemned work as high risk.

They are being challenged in court but there defence has been “the olive disintegrated since the service”.

This is laughable considering it’s not just an olive, it’s an olive reducer which is about 18mm long, 8mm dia and has a 2mm wall thickness.

Where can I get some statements from professionals stating this could not disintegrate to nothing? 

It’s likely the Gassafe report is enough but you do have to understand the durability of brass in a dry environment to know the defense is ludicrous so want to be prepared for this defence.

Thankyou.

ThisIsWeird

I would be very surprised if the GasSafe's report was not enough; they are the 'experts' - the 'professionals' - in this type of issue after all, and will have years of experience with brass fittings; they can state with certainty that the claim is utterly bogus. As you say, it's laughable. A brass reducer in contact with only natural gas to have completely disintegrated from being 'present' at the service to 'disappeared without a single trace' in 16 weeks? Not even in 16 years. Or 16 decades.

You cannot be expected to locate a qualified metallurgist to answer every ludicrous claim they may levy.

You may, of course, be at the whim of an ignorant (in terms of plumbing) adjudicator, so why not ask the maker of the boiler if there are any circumstances in which this fitting could have 'disappeared' in 16 weeks other than it having been removed?

Ganga

Can you not get a report from the manufacturers of the olive/fitting to confirm that  it is impossible for the item to " rust " away in the time frame in question ,also i would take the said item to court with me for the court to see the strength /make up of the item.

mi-key

I think the gas safe report will be fine, and in any case the court will see through it as complete rubbish.

You can buy antique brass candlesticks and ornaments, and none of them seem to have magically dissaspeared. Olives are used in lots of copper pipe fittings, and none of them vanish either. 

tacpot12

The court should be deciding what is likely to have happened "on the balance of probabilities". It seems much more likely that it was ommited, and not that it 'disintegrated'. I think it would be reasonable for you to require the trader to provide evidence of this (or a similar) component disintegrating in service, and for them to suggest the process that caused the disintegration. 

Dezincification is a failure that can occur in brass components, but severe dezincification, which would typically take place over many years requires exposure to corrosive chemical environment  and would lead to the copper being left behind, not the complete disappearance of the fitting! (My source is Preventing and Treating the Dezincification of Brass – Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) Notes 9/13 - Canada.ca) 

You might keep your eye on eBay in case another boiler of the same model (or even of the same manufacturer/vintage) comes up for sale cheaply. You could extract the olive and supply it as evidence of the typical state of such olives in service. It should be obvious to a lay-person (such as the judge) that such a component cannot deteriorate from a safe condition to dust within 16 weeks.

Moneybox

Thankyou all and Tacpot12 thanks those are great ideas I hadn’t considered. Thankyou. 👍 

casper_gutman

It isn't remotely credible for the fitting to disintegrate to the point of vanishing in four months. But even if this could have happened, any metal which could do this would presumably have been in very poor condition at the time the boiler was serviced. Given that the part in question was seen and handled during the service, why didn't the rogue trader notice and take action as any competent technician would have?

Based on the facts as you've presented them, with the Gas Safe report as backup, I can't personally imagine the ruling would go against you.

mi-key

If brass olives routinely disintegrated ( which is probably the most laughable excuse I have heard ) everyones boilers that had them fitted would be failing within months of being fitted and there would be a huge outcry and recalls to the manufacturers...

ThisIsWeird

...and quite a few explosions.

It's nuts, but actually good that the charlatan is trying such a crazy defence, since it's that bit worse than mere incompetence, and will be so easy to discredit. It'll highlight his dishonesty.

Ideally an email from the boiler manufacturer. And your GasSafe.

RonRamsgate

That brass part is a generic part commonly used in historic glowworm gas boilers, it is fully concealed in a pilot injector/pilot block. 

Maybe get an expert witness on your side, Corgi were a well known name in the gas business, they now offer many other services including expert witness service for a fee 

Hope you get it all sorted out   

Section62

Moneybox said:

It’s likely the Gassafe report is enough but you do have to understand the durability of brass in a dry environment to know the defense is ludicrous so want to be prepared for this defence.

Be careful to make sure the rest of your claim all stacks up and is properly evidenced.  It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking you have a 'silver bullet' with something as nonsensical as this, and as a result neglect to make sure everything else about your own position is absolutely watertight.

There's a risk that if the 'disintegration' defence falls away, something else emerges which exposes a hole in your own arguments.

In other words, don't overfocus on metal disintegration - there's a possibility this is what the other side want you to do.