Megaflow - Warranty ending but ongoing issue.

housebuyer143

My Megaflow cylinder is just under 2 years old and about 4 months ago I noticed that water was coming out of the overflow pipe outside (although I believe it was happening from much earlier in the year). 
I called megaflow out under warranty in May and they refilled the air gap. About 3 weeks later I noticed it was still happening and they came out early July to fix it again, this time replacing a few parts on the pipework.

I have noticed today it's dripping again and the air gap has gone again after less than 2 months which isn't right. 

I'm going to call megaflow again on Monday but the 2 year warranty expires in about a week at which point it's not covered for free. Say they come out again and fail to fix it, I won't be able to tell for a good few weeks and then it's out of warranty.

My question is: as this is an ongoing fault they have failed to repair on many visits, should they continue to repair this fault under the warranty, even after it has expired?  I believe the next step is to install an external expansion vessel.

The warranty reads: The Megaflo Warranty'
The Megaflo Warranty covers any Megaflo cylinder or calorifier installed in domestic properties. There is a 30 year warranty on inner tank for all Megaflo cylinders and 2 years on all other components.

Would the internal air gap failure count as "inner tank"? 

Browntoa

If you make contact prior to the warranty end it's still covered 

BarelySentientAI

Failure happened within the warranty period, so I would expect that everything stemming from that failure is covered until it is finally fixed.

gm0

The need to regenerate is not itself proof of a fault.  Normal operational procedure.  The need for it (and frequency) can be increased by a tank fault.  And by other things around your system. So murky for warranty.  It depends. 

We have been on 3 month and 6 month and longer than that cycles at various times over >25 years and two tanks and across other changes to the system.

External factors to the tank and its manufacturing warranty are not Megaflow's responsibility to find and resolve at no cost. 

Treading firmly formally to ensure you aren't fobbed off as out of time on the tank possibility - but softly as well - reasonably accepting there is more than one possible contributor to regeneration being more often.

It is sensible to pursue the "still under warranty claim" ensuring it was formally logged as "in date" and not out of time

They may at some point in investigating - declare your tank "healthy" and leave you to it - problem unsolved from your perspective.  Whether that was "true" is based on the validity of the investigation steps. I don't know how you actually "prove" this definitively one way or another non-destructively with the system installed and live.

Review what else is connected - age/condition. Whether your cold feed is sometimes or always full of air bubbles etc.  Easy to see - with a glass jug and a tap in extreme cases.  Variable (and high/low) water pressure + sticking non-returns.  Failed shower mixers.  All these can affect the health of the pressurised hot circuit and how it interacts with a cold feed across a Megaflow membrane.

We fitted an extra external expansion vessel. Pursuing a water hammer.  It wasn't a solution.  
Plumbers can suggest adding expansion on the "something must be done - this is something - do this - might work - approach".  I am sure it can work sometimes.  But it is an attempted mitigation not actual problem finding/resolving.  We found our underlying fault elsewhere on the pressurised hot water system (a crude and failing shower mixer) and our hammer disappeared completely as soon as that was gone.  Adding expansion before that - changed the resonance and the tone of the noise but did nothing else useful.  Your situation may be quite different of course.  Good luck.

housebuyer143

gm0 said:

The need to regenerate is not itself proof of a fault.  Normal operational procedure.  The need for it (and frequency) can be increased by a tank fault.  And by other things around your system. So murky for warranty.  It depends. 

We have been on 3 month and 6 month and longer than that cycles at various times over >25 years and two tanks and across other changes to the system.

External factors to the tank and its manufacturing warranty are not Megaflow's responsibility to find and resolve at no cost. 

Treading firmly formally to ensure you aren't fobbed off as out of time on the tank possibility - but softly as well - reasonably accepting there is more than one possible contributor to regeneration being more often.

It is sensible to pursue the "still under warranty claim" ensuring it was formally logged as "in date" and not out of time

They may at some point in investigating - declare your tank "healthy" and leave you to it - problem unsolved from your perspective.  Whether that was "true" is based on the validity of the investigation steps. I don't know how you actually "prove" this definitively one way or another non-destructively with the system installed and live.

Review what else is connected - age/condition. Whether your cold feed is sometimes or always full of air bubbles etc.  Easy to see - with a glass jug and a tap in extreme cases.  Variable (and high/low) water pressure + sticking non-returns.  Failed shower mixers.  All these can affect the health of the pressurised hot circuit and how it interacts with a cold feed across a Megaflow membrane.

We fitted an extra external expansion vessel. Pursuing a water hammer.  It wasn't a solution.  
Plumbers can suggest adding expansion on the "something must be done - this is something - do this - might work - approach".  I am sure it can work sometimes.  But it is an attempted mitigation not actual problem finding/resolving.  We found our underlying fault elsewhere on the pressurised hot water system (a crude and failing shower mixer) and our hammer disappeared completely as soon as that was gone.  Adding expansion before that - changed the resonance and the tone of the noise but did nothing else useful.  Your situation may be quite different of course.  Good luck.

Thanks, so if I'm getting backfilling from a faulty tap then the external expansion vessel will just fill with water as well? 

All I can think is I have a bathroom mixer which has a shower attachment. I'm not sure on the age but it's the only mixer that isn't new. We also have very high cold water pressure, higher than the hot water, could that be a culprit as well? 

Kiran

If you have mixer valves you should have a balanced system. There should be a pressure reducing valve on your incoming cold main.

housebuyer143

Kiran said:

If you have mixer valves you should have a balanced system. There should be a pressure reducing valve on your incoming cold main.

There is a PRV on the cold main next to the tank. The engineer who came last time mentioned maybe we should have two because the pressure is so high. Says he's not really experienced such high pressure before 🤷‍♀️ 
Not sure if that's something we need on the incoming cold by the stop tap as well? Our pressure really is nuts.

 Baxi basically said they will not repair it after the warranty expires even though it's ongoing 😑 I'll be escalating that to a manager as that stance doesn't seem right at all.