New water tank needed?

queenbee4000

A friend of mine recently had a split water tank and it caused a lot of damage. It isn’t something I had thought of so I looked in my loft at the tank and it is plastic and has the date 1991 on it (although the house was built in 1998/9 I think?) - is it worthwhile replacing it or is that a rarity and not something I need to be concerned about? I live on my own and am fairly clueless about this stuff. Ideally I would get rid of it but I am guessing that requires a new boiler and my boiler is fairly new. Thank you

MattMattMattUK

queenbee4000 said:

A friend of mine recently had a split water tank and it caused a lot of damage. It isn’t something I had thought of so I looked in my loft at the tank and it is plastic and has the date 1991 on it (although the house was built in 1998/9 I think?) - is it worthwhile replacing it or is that a rarity and not something I need to be concerned about? I live on my own and am fairly clueless about this stuff.

It is rare, did your friends tank freeze?

queenbee4000 said:

Ideally I would get rid of it but I am guessing that requires a new boiler and my boiler is fairly new. Thank you

It probably would not require a new boiler, it might require a new hot water tank though and potentially some new taps as you would probably want to switch to a mains pressure hot water tank.

twopenny

Assuming this is the main cold water tank? 

They last for ages but online search suggests anything from 10-30yrs..

I had a galvanised one in my last house that did the job for 60yrs before it just started to leak in odd spots. A water stain on the ceiling was the first I noticed. It didn't go all at once or suddenly.

I'd suggest if you're happy to go up there, take a good torch and lok round it throughly. While you are there measure it.

One thing you can do if you're not sure is to put paper towels or similar around and under then go up and check 2 weeks later and see if there's any drip.

How did your friends new tank get put in the loft?

Albermarle

It is more likely that a leak will come from the pipework, especially in freezing weather.
You should make sure that the tank and pipework in the loft is lagged properly.

stuart45

It's quite rare for a plastic tank to go, but when they do there can be a lot of damage. It's also worth checking how clean they are inside. I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't be cleaning their teeth with the water if they saw inside the tank.