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Plumbing

Water tank empties Puzzle, any ideas?

Anonymous user 01/03/2024 - 2.57 PM

I have a house in 10 flats, No central heating as all electric radiators, all sinks are plumbed straight of the mains for fresh drinkable water and have under sink instantaneous water heaters, but all the toilets and electric showers are fed with water from a storage tank in the loft, this tank refills from the mains. Lately the tank has started to fill very loudly, fast and continuously for hours at a time, the water leaving the tank can be seen flowing through the outside drain or sewer pipe, the problem does not appear to be the ball valve or float in the tank, since if I hold the float up the mains water stops refilling but the water level continues to drop until the tank is empty. All toilets and showers have been checked for leaks or overflow, nothing found, and all flats checked for leaks also nothing found. The really puzzling thing is that the problem is intermittent, may happen for anything from 1 to several hours on one day then simply stop before starting this refilling cycle again hours or several days later. In the meantime it fills and empties normally as per water demand I have tried turning water from the tank that feeds toilets and showers off and then on again at stopcock within each flat, one at a time, but because of the intermittent nature of the problem it is impossible to diagnose if any one flat makes a difference. I tried getting “expert” help, but plumbers seem perplexed and say they don't deal with this kind of thing, and getting in a track and trace service seems hopeless as the problem is so intermittent. Any boffins out there with an idea?

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4 Answers

ACG Mechanical Building Services

Rating: 5 out of 5

Chesham

Hard to diagnose remotely to be honest. I'd personally advise a physical fault finding procedure. Start by tracing all the pipework from the cistern outlet down to each individual floor. Somewhere in that building there is an outlet that is draining the water, but you need to be on site to see it happening. I'm assuming all the flats are in use?

Answered17 February 2022

Onefuzz plumbing

Rating: 5 out of 5

Newhaven

hello, from what you said , the problem could be with the float valve in the nights slowley letting by and overflowing back in the pan, or could be debris stuck on the underneath o,f push button flush valve washers in the wcs , the on;y way to sort is process of elimination, by isolatng items and tracing down to that.

Answered17 February 2022

Anonymous user

Have you checked all toilets ,possibly an internal overflow happening intermittently causing continuous supply from storage tank but really needs proper investigation good luck

Answered6 March 2022

TJS Plumbing

Rating: 5 out of 5

Brentwood

Im suprised the electric shower is tank fed as normally electric showers should be mains fed ... The loss of water from the tank has got to be one of the toilets constantly running draining the tank or the tank is feeding something else apart from only the showers and toilets

Answered14 March 2022