Brown floating bits in hot water

moneysaver1978

Fingers crossed it is all sorted - it's a weird issue and first I have heard. Please do report back if you can

Albermarle

He is also planning to come out and exchange the flexible hose connecting the cylinder to the expansion vessel.

This is a good idea. Ours split early one morning. Luckily my OH heard a hissing noise and woke me up. Also luckily I knew where the stoptap was and had turned it recently. So all that happened was a wet floor by the tank and I got wet as well !

The plumber said he had seen a house made unliveable in after after a similar incident, that was not caught for a long time.

Annemos

Just cleaned out my electric kettle. The bits in there look very much like this. We are in a very hard water area. 

Green_hopeful

We had a connection on our pressurised system go. The hardwired smoke alarm woke us up when the water cascaded through the floor to the ground floor. It was flowing down the stairs like an indoor water feature. Kids got up and found a couple of bits of hosepipe to divert the water out of the window while we rushed to try to turn the stop tap off. 

The man from disaster care said ‘f****ing hell this is a mess’ when he arrived. I took the kids on holiday and my husband stayed behind to clear up. Fortunately both first and ground floor were concrete and it was clean water so the disaster care man just vaxed up the spare water and we waited for it to dry out. No lasting harm. 

I didn’t realise but we were supposed to get the pressurised system serviced annually. 

liviboy

Annemos said:

Just cleaned out my electric kettle. The bits in there look very much like this. We are in a very hard water area. 

Yes, if we lived in a hard water area I would agree...to an extent.

The brown bits 'smear' and are greasy or oily and leave a smear mark behind when pulled along the basin or bath.

But regardless, we are very much not in a hard water area.

Vortigern

liviboy said:

The brown bits 'smear' and are greasy or oily and leave a smear mark behind when pulled along the basin or bath.

Could it be soldering flux? - washed down from a soldered joint upstream.

Albermarle

Green_hopeful said:

We had a connection on our pressurised system go. The hardwired smoke alarm woke us up when the water cascaded through the floor to the ground floor. It was flowing down the stairs like an indoor water feature. Kids got up and found a couple of bits of hosepipe to divert the water out of the window while we rushed to try to turn the stop tap off. 

The man from disaster care said ‘f****ing hell this is a mess’ when he arrived. I took the kids on holiday and my husband stayed behind to clear up. Fortunately both first and ground floor were concrete and it was clean water so the disaster care man just vaxed up the spare water and we waited for it to dry out. No lasting harm. 

I didn’t realise but we were supposed to get the pressurised system serviced annually. 

AIUI, most gas boiler services do not include even a cursory once over of the unvented cylinder, EV , pipework etc.
There is nothing to service as such, but an inspection at least should ideally be part of the boiler service but seems to be rather variable whether that happens.

liviboy

Vortigern said:

liviboy said:

The brown bits 'smear' and are greasy or oily and leave a smear mark behind when pulled along the basin or bath.

Could it be soldering flux? - washed down from a soldered joint upstream.

2 years after any pipework was worked on? I'm not sure in all honesty.

twopenny

It's driving me nuts because I know I've seen that slime before and I can't remember where.
It wasn't in water pipes though.
It was in a pot, bucket, something with still water and it grew round the edge but came off easily.
I'll keep thinking.

FreeBear

Vortigern said:

liviboy said:

The brown bits 'smear' and are greasy or oily and leave a smear mark behind when pulled along the basin or bath.

Could it be soldering flux? - washed down from a soldered joint upstream.

The fluxes used by most plumbers are water soluble, so unlikely to be that.