What you should not save on when repairing

Due to cur­rent prices and the dol­lar exchange rate, many save on the com­po­nents of the heat­ing and water sup­ply sys­tems. As a rule, these are cheap radi­a­tors, cheap floor heat­ing pipes, cheap boil­ers and inex­pen­sive plumb­ing from an unknown man­u­fac­tur­er. But sav­ings don’t always bring good results. In order not to pay twice, you need to under­stand how to save mon­ey wise­ly.

Pipes and fittings

The most unwise thing a client can do when ren­o­vat­ing a bath­room is to start sav­ing on pipes, fit­tings, man­i­folds, stop­cocks and oth­er fit­tings. It is dif­fi­cult for an unini­ti­at­ed per­son to under­stand why one pipe costs 10 rubles and the oth­er 50 rubles, although they look and are exact­ly the same in appear­ance and pur­pose. Why buy a nick­el-plat­ed Gen­er­al Fit­tings brand­ed tee for 1000 rubles when you can find the “exact­ly the same” unnamed ana­logue made of brass for half the price at the near­est hard­ware store? The answer to these ques­tions comes by itself, but after the repair is com­plet­ed. In the best case, your faucet will leak, in the worst case, it will break the pipe, which is already walled up in the wall and beau­ti­ful­ly lined with expen­sive tiles. Sav­ing a cou­ple of hun­dred on a pipe or a cheap­er fit­ting, you will have to shell out a tidy sum for fix­ing a leak and buy­ing a new unit, com­pen­sat­ing for dam­age to flood­ed neigh­bors, as well as a new bath­room redec­o­ra­tion. It is impos­si­ble to save cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly on pipes and com­mu­ni­ca­tions in the bath­room. Engi­neer­ing sys­tems are mount­ed once and for life, to be hid­den in the walls and floor under beau­ti­ful tiles. Not so sig­nif­i­cant sav­ings on the replace­ment of ele­ments of water sup­ply net­works can result in incom­pa­ra­bly large costs for dis­man­tling, repair and fin­ish­ing mate­ri­als.

Today, there are a huge num­ber of Chi­nese-made hand­i­crafts on the mar­ket. Plumb­ing stores offer a huge selec­tion of repli­cas for well-known world brands — Bugat­ti, Tiemme, Rehau, etc. More­over, this can be both out­right fakes and prod­ucts of lit­tle-known brands, which dif­fer only in a very low price.

Visu­al­ly quite sound, they show their real face only dur­ing oper­a­tion. As a rule, for such cheap ana­logues, low-qual­i­ty pow­der met­al is used, which in Russ­ian heat­ing and water sup­ply sys­tems quick­ly rots or breaks right at the instal­la­tion stage.

As an exam­ple, a torn copy of an Amer­i­can Bugat­ti, bought by a client in one of the city’s stores at a very good price. The fit­ting last­ed a lit­tle over four months in the sys­tem, after which our engi­neers faced the dif­fi­cult task of replac­ing the heat­ing with min­i­mal dis­man­tling of the walls after a recent repair.

How to be? If you are not a spe­cial­ist, in no case should you try to save on com­po­nents for engi­neer­ing net­works as you see fit. Only a spe­cial­ist can choose a cheap­er, but no less high-qual­i­ty ana­logue. More­over, the plumber who was rec­om­mend­ed to you by acquain­tance is not always one. Be sure to ask for cer­tifi­cates for pipes and fit­tings in the store to ver­i­fy the authen­tic­i­ty of the brand and the qual­i­ty of the prod­uct. In any Proffin­stal engi­neer­ing cen­ter you will be pro­vid­ed with the nec­es­sary doc­u­men­ta­tion and pro­fes­sion­al engi­neers will advise you on pos­si­ble ana­logues.

Plumbing

How long has it been since you changed your bath­room faucet? Accord­ing to all-Russ­ian stan­dards, cranes must last at least 15 years. For plumb­ing, the ser­vice life is even longer: at least 30 years for a toi­let, 40 years for a cast-iron bath, 25 for a steel one. In prac­tice, plumb­ing is unlike­ly to last from one repair to anoth­er. A huge selec­tion of for­eign brands and prices can strike the imag­i­na­tion of an unpre­pared buy­er. As a rule, hav­ing seen an Ital­ian bath for sev­er­al hun­dred thou­sand rubles, the client does not under­stand where such an exor­bi­tant cost came from, and prefers the cheap­est option. But is it eco­nom­i­cal? Con­sid­er the sim­plest exam­ple — the pur­chase of a steel enam­el bath, which is bought in almost every new apart­ment.

Steel baths are made of sheet steel with a thick­ness of 1.5 — 3.5 mm. If the bath costs from 1500 to 2000 rubles, then this is a thin-walled mod­el, for which steel no more than 1.8 mm thick was used. The thin­ner the steel wall, the worse the bath holds its shape and begins to “walk” under the weight of water and a per­son. If the bath is not care­ful­ly bal­anced with addi­tion­al stops, then already dur­ing the first two years of oper­a­tion, defor­ma­tions are like­ly and, as a result, destruc­tion and cor­ro­sion of the enam­el. In the ear­ly stages, it is almost imper­cep­ti­ble. But in the future, rough and dark areas that can be mis­tak­en for dirt and soap deposits can become cov­ered with cracks, rust and begin to flake off. And enam­el restora­tion costs almost one and a half times more than the orig­i­nal pur­chase price. A good steel bath­tub worth 6000–8000 rubles is made from a sheet with a thick­ness of at least 2.5 mm. The thick­er the walls of the bath, the eas­i­er it is to apply a thin lay­er of enam­el coat­ing dur­ing pro­duc­tion. Defor­ma­tion under the weight of the weight is min­i­mized, and a thin coat­ing of enam­el is more plas­tic, high-qual­i­ty and durable. The thin­ner the enam­el, the less like­ly it is to chip. So don’t wor­ry if you acci­den­tal­ly drop your show­er or pumice stone into an emp­ty tub.

The cheap­er the plumb­ing, the low­er its con­sumer qual­i­ties. At the time of pur­chase, every­thing may look more than decent, but after instal­la­tion and con­nec­tion to the water sup­ply sys­tem at home, a cheap Chi­nese faucet can give a weak and rough jet of water, and the Russ­ian-Sovi­et toi­let will instant­ly turn yel­low and spray over its own­ers.

How to be? If you want to save mon­ey on repairs, then it is bet­ter to give pref­er­ence to cheap­er bath­room fur­ni­ture, but to choose bet­ter and more expen­sive plumb­ing. We rec­om­mend that you pay atten­tion to a well-estab­lished brand in the mid­dle price cat­e­go­ry and buy the most expen­sive san­i­tary ware in its line that fits into your bud­get. Among these brands, we can safe­ly rec­om­mend the Czech brand Jika or the Span­ish plumb­ing Roca, which guar­an­tee the qual­i­ty and aes­thet­ic appear­ance of plumb­ing for at least 30 years and have quite afford­able prices.

Radiators

The most com­mon option for city apart­ments is bimetal­lic radi­a­tors. Now they are installed in every new build­ing and many own­ers want to build up sev­er­al sec­tions to make it warmer. The choice of bimetal­lic has increased so much that in any store there are at least three brands in dif­fer­ent price cat­e­gories. Buy­ers are only hap­py to choose among seem­ing­ly iden­ti­cal mod­els the one that has a low­er price tag. An ordi­nary per­son knows about the heat­ing sys­tem only that it con­sists of 3–4 bat­ter­ies under the win­dows in each room of the apart­ment. Which radi­a­tor to choose, what to pay atten­tion to, why they dif­fer in price — all this is beyond the under­stand­ing of most of our cus­tomers. And real­ly, how often do you pay atten­tion to radi­a­tors? Once installed, they should sit there until you want to make a new repair. Or until some­thing hap­pens. And as a rule, all the trou­bles hap­pen when the client wants to save on radi­a­tors and choos­es what is cheap­er.

Radi­a­tors cost­ing up to 400 rubles per sec­tion are not entire­ly bimetal­lic. This so-called semi-bimet­al. The bat­ter­ies are an alu­minum case in which the ver­ti­cal chan­nels are rein­forced with steel tubes. At the tran­si­tion points between the tubes, the coolant comes into con­tact with alu­minum, which should not be in prin­ci­ple. The result is a grad­ual destruc­tion of the met­al as a result of a chem­i­cal reac­tion. The worse the qual­i­ty of the coolant in the sys­tem, the faster this process goes. A real 100% bimetal­lic radi­a­tor cost­ing from 500 rubles per sec­tion is a mono­lith­ic alloy in which con­tact between alu­minum and water is exclud­ed. The ser­vice life of such a radi­a­tor is from 50 to 80 years, while as a semi-bimet­al it will hard­ly last 20–30 years. For an ordi­nary buy­er, 20 or 80 years seems like a huge time, and many choose less durable, but cheap­er mod­els, not tak­ing into account oth­er nuances of low cost.

The max­i­mum allow­able pres­sure for inex­pen­sive radi­a­tors is less than for full bimet­al. They tol­er­ate less air bleed­ing in the sys­tem, shut­downs and inter­rup­tions in heat­ing, as well as fre­quent water ham­mers of munic­i­pal heat­ing net­works. Alu­minum, which is already sus­cep­ti­ble to destruc­tion, is forced to expe­ri­ence pres­sure surges, which leads to leak­age at junc­tions with pipes and in welds. Man­u­fac­tur­ers of cheap semi-met­al save mon­ey by using the resis­tance elec­tric weld­ing method. In the process of con­tact of the parts at the moment of heat­ing, the met­al boils and splash­es, leav­ing sharp burrs, which nar­rows the space for the pas­sage of the coolant at the junc­tion of the ver­ti­cal and hor­i­zon­tal col­lec­tors. And burrs, if poor­ly processed, help debris and oth­er small par­ti­cles clog the pas­sage. As a result, at best, the radi­a­tor will cease to radi­ate heat nor­mal­ly, at worst, its ser­vice life will be reduced to 3–5 years in the cen­tral heat­ing sys­tem.

What to do? Not even a spe­cial­ist can check the qual­i­ty of a radi­a­tor. The heat dis­si­pa­tion effi­cien­cy of the device and com­pli­ance with the require­ments of the appli­ca­tion can be checked by mea­sur­ing the wall thick­ness with a stan­dard ruler. The thick­er the case, the heav­ier the bat­tery, the high­er the heat trans­fer and the more reli­able the per­for­mance of the radi­a­tor. For trust­ed man­u­fac­tur­ers, the thick­ness of the rib is at least 1 mm.

Installation and plumbing services

An incor­rect­ly cho­sen diam­e­ter and a giv­en slope of the pipes lead to poor per­me­abil­i­ty, and the client won­ders why the new expen­sive mix­er gives such a weak water pres­sure. Unrea­son­able pip­ing leads to an ugly and over­ly com­plex sys­tem in which too many unnec­es­sary ele­ments are used. And then the client crawls all his life under the bath­room to turn off the water or write off the coun­ters. In plumb­ing, the say­ing “the miser pays twice” works for one hun­dred, or even two hun­dred per­cent, if we take into account the com­pen­sa­tion for dam­age to him­self and his neigh­bors from below. Con­tact only qual­i­fied crafts­men who can tech­ni­cal­ly jus­ti­fy the pur­chase of even the sim­plest fit­ting and the loca­tion of each valve. Engi­neer­ing sys­tems do not allow an intu­itive friv­o­lous approach.

Deter­min­ing the qual­i­fi­ca­tions of a plumber is very sim­ple. To begin with, he will take an inter­est in the size of the bud­get that you are will­ing to spend on work and mate­ri­als. Based on the need and the scope of the announced amount, a tech­ni­cal project is drawn up, an esti­mate is made and the terms of the repair are agreed. If you agree with the pro­posed option, the pur­chase of mate­ri­als with strict account­abil­i­ty for checks and invoic­es and direct instal­la­tion begins. A good mas­ter will check the qual­i­ty of the sys­tem through­out all stages. So that the client does not have an emer­gency when the repair is com­plet­ed, all com­mu­ni­ca­tions are hid­den under the fin­ish, and the equip­ment is installed and hid­den in the fur­ni­ture set. Pro­fes­sion­al installers work exclu­sive­ly under a con­tract, which, in the event of poor-qual­i­ty repairs, can serve as grounds for com­pen­sa­tion for dam­age.

Plumbers and installers from Proffin­stal work only on this prin­ci­ple, so we strong­ly rec­om­mend them for instal­la­tion and ser­vice. If you want to approach the repair in the right way, con­tact our engi­neers by one of the phones, and we will help you find a com­pe­tent spe­cial­ist in Alek­san­drov, Nogin­sk, Sergiev Posad, Kirzhach and oth­er cities of the Moscow and Vladimir regions.