For the last few weeks during the course of the day I have had water trickling out of the white plastic overflow pipe from my loft onto my patio. Now a friend of mine who is a plumber (who I'm always suspect of tucking me up) tells me the trickling water is coming from the hot water tank in the loft and he says the water is hot in the tank which apparantly it shouldn't be. He is suggesting a good clean out with a power flush system at vast expense plus some other work to rectify. Would anyone be able to give me a more impartial opinion as to what's causing the problem. It's an oil fired system. Plus lately the water from the hot taps has been coming through a slight browny colour for the first few seconds when turned on. Thank you.

pleasant, February 2009

If you do not use your immersion there are a couple of reasons why this might happen 1) do you have any mixer showers/taps fed on the hot side by tank and cold side by cold main as if a mixer is letting cold through it can backfill the hot water cylinder causing overflow or 2) the coil in your cylinder is allowing central heating water to backfill the hot water system. Do you have a pressurised heating system and is it losing pressure or is the heating f&e tank higher than your overflowing cold water tank?

SE gasman, March 2009

check your imersion heater thermostat and cylinder stat

STE, February 2009