Ever since I fitted the boiler/plumbing in the van there has been a water leak underneath.  It was not enough to concern me so I only got round to fixing it a month ago when I had a few spare pennies and some time.

I had thought it was the safety dump valve.  This is thermostatically controlled so that if it drops below 4C it will release all the water out of the boiler to protect it.   I thought an internal seal in this was leaky.

At the same time as I was doing this I decided to redo the plumbing to get rid of what I consider bodge parts.  These consist of the connectors on the boiler, the kitchen tap and the dump valve.   Because these three items are not speed fit parts they require a little bit of clear hose with jubilee clips, then an adapter with more jubilee clips then the quick fit straight connectors.  They look horrible and jubilee clipped pipe does leak especially on the hot side.

I found out you could get replacement taps for the SMEV sink, Replacement dump valves with speedfit connectors and replacement adapters for the boiler.  I bought all these and some parts from Magnums.

I fitted these all in and everything seemed fine.  What I found out while fitting this was that it wasn’t the dump valve it was the cold water entry to the boiler that was leaking and the water was running down the pipe to the dump valve.  I couldn’t see this from inside the van as it was hidden.

Anyway to cut a long story short,  The entry point still leaked…   I have just got round to spending some time on it and ended up stripping it all down again.  When I looked inside the connector on the boiler side I saw that the O ring was split and crushed.   I took one out of the old fittings and connected it all up…..

I now have the boiler filled again and no leak.  However I have switched the boiler on to get it hot and do a pressure test on it.  Fingers crossed this is all sorted now and I have a dry van…

It is times like this that I am glad I have a selfbuild.  Otherwise I would have been booking into a dealer and paying a fortune to hang around all day..