Its snowing!

[gallsman]

Anyone know if it's ok to leave oil-fired central heating on? Taps dried up there about half an hour ago.

[comethekingdom]

if you dont have a leak in your central heating system - its ok. The water in the CH system is independent from mains water.

[clarshack]

if you dont have a leak in your central heating system - its ok. The water in the CH system is independent from mains water.

i was told that if the water for the heating ran out, the whole system could then be airlocked?

[Tony Baloney]

Yis will get ur wish for Water charges ok, but you'll have to wait until after the Assembly elections. Will there be any appreciable difference thou? I doubt if the GB experience is anything to go by. Freak weather conditions will still catch us unawares as well, people have to accept that, especially in the current Economic environment.

Well based on the standard of workmanship and cost effectiveness we usually receive you may have a point.

The US weather conditions of 2-3 feet of snow in 24 hours are freak weather conditions. A prolonged (prolonged is the important part) freeze should have given NIW time to gear up for the inevitable thaw. Very few people I've seen on the news have been having a go about the leaks themselves, the gripes (in common with the airport fiascos in Heathrow etc.) have been with regard to the communication problems. I dont doubt there are many many highly paid communications consultants on the books of our local public service and there has time to sort this out before the thaw came. Fail.

[bennydorano]

Not lookin to defend NIW, but surely a lot of problems with frozen mains pipes wouldn't become evident until the thaw kicked in I'd also bet that a very loarge % of the calls that NIW  are fielding should really be to a local plumber

[Square Ball]

Still no water in the ormeau road area

[mournerambler]

Not lookin to defend NIW, but surely a lot of problems with frozen mains pipes wouldn't become evident until the thaw kicked in I'd also bet that a very loarge % of the calls that NIW  are fielding should really be to a local plumber

It costs money to call a plumber out, NIW come out FOC, ther's your answer I would think.

[mylestheslasher]

Isn't it strange that no one on the Board has yet to suggest that the Minister in charge should walk?  Four years in charge and the second hard winter leave little room for excuses that it was the British.  Surely there can be little reason left for avoiding water charges to bring in the upgrades needed in the infrastructure.

I'd never blame the British for us having no water in Dublin.

You probably should, a lot of the pipe work in Dublin is so old the brits probably installed them. I read somewhere that over 30% of water in Dublin is lost to leaks and this before any big freeze

[armaghniac]

Meanwhile there are flows of ice floes in Donegal

[orangeman]

Why not rip up all the exisiting pipelines that have clearly failed miserably ?.

A lot of people are out of work - why not get people back to work and at the same time doing something useful like installing a water network that will work under all conditions ?.

[Never beat the deeler]

Isn't it strange that no one on the Board has yet to suggest that the Minister in charge should walk?  Four years in charge and the second hard winter leave little room for excuses that it was the British.  Surely there can be little reason left for avoiding water charges to bring in the upgrades needed in the infrastructure.

I'd never blame the British for us having no water in Dublin.

You probably should, a lot of the pipe work in Dublin is so old the brits probably installed them. I read somewhere that over 30% of water in Dublin is lost to leaks and this before any big freeze

I think you'd find that percentage to be fairly typical, though it is recommended that corrective action is required if a system is losing more than 20%

[oakleafgael]

Why not rip up all the exisiting pipelines that have clearly failed miserably ?.

A lot of people are out of work - why not get people back to work and at the same time doing something useful like installing a water network that will work under all conditions ?.

OM,

Jesus its just not that simple unfortunately. The watermain contractors are probably one of the only sectors of the construction industry that are running any where close to capacity, although the margins are now exceptionally tight. Laying a watermain isnt as straight forward as ripping up the road and throwing a bit of pipe into the ground. There is a 5 year WMRF that started in August and it will make a fair hole in the works required over its duration and renewal IF the funding is kept in place.

[oakleafgael]

The problems on the main on your road where nothing to do with either the Electro fusion or butt welded joints in the pipe but due to surge pressures that werent picked up on at design stage. On maybe a dozen ocassions or more approx 6/8 Bar of pressure higher than max design pressure ended up in the line with the end result of bursts which ou had to put up with.

A bit scary you can identify our road and difficulties!

The box would have been properly sealed during construction stage and this is one of the things that is very tightly checked when the works are being snagged. If in the intervening period the box has been opened and not closed properly or even damaged by traffic it is hardly the fault of a contractor.

The box has never been opened by me since it was installed to the extent I didn't realise the design had changed. It was not damaged in anyway by traffic.

Measure the depth of the box from the footpath down to the crown of the meter plug and let me know what depth it is. It will reveal a lot.

Just measured it at 220mm from path level.

TYP,

Its a small town you live in! Cases like the pipeline on your road are few and far between so they become common knowledge.

If there is only 220mm from the path to the crown of the pipe then there is no way that the service pipe to your house is 30 inches deep.

[Square Ball]

still no water here, starting to get really annoying, I am sure its even worse for a lot of people who have been without water for longer than 2 days, especially those with no heating and small children.

[Square Ball]

we have running water, horray