SOLAS Plumbing case studies
SOLAS Plumbing · Put your knowledge to work in context.
The SOLAS plumbing craft certification is the Irish trade qualification route for plumbers working on domestic, commercial and industrial installations. It is aimed at apprentices completing their craft phases, experienced plumbers seeking formal recognition of skills gained on site, and those returning to the trade who need their competence confirmed against a current national standard. The SOLAS Plumbing case studies are 5 cases and about 4,396 words.
1Top-floor shower starved by a loft cistern and an old float valve
A three-storey Victorian house has been converted into six flats. Cold water to the three top-floor flats and a communal shower room comes from a single 180 L galvanised cistern in the loft, filled through a 15 mm copper branch and an old pattern 2 float valve.
761 words, about 4 min2New WC branches gurgling and draining slowly in a shop conversion
A ground-floor retail unit is being converted. A store room becomes two WCs and a washbasin.
938 words, about 5 min3Weather-compensated system boiler short cycling and a heat pump ambition
A four-bedroom detached house has a 26 kW system boiler, a 250 L unvented cylinder with a 1.0 m² coil, and twelve radiators sized for 75/65 °C with a 20 °C room condition. The owner has had weather compensation fitted, and on a design day the boiler now runs 65 °C flow and 45 °C return.
927 words, about 5 min4Care home sentinel temperatures, dead legs and an unprotected sprayer fill point
A 30-bed residential care home has a 500 L unvented calorifier stored at 62 °C with a blending valve at the calorifier outlet set to 45 °C. Monthly monitoring shows the sentinel hot outlet in room 12, the least used room, at 41 °C after one minute; the cold supply to the same room at 23 °C after two minutes in July; and the calorifier return at 48 °C.
720 words, about 4 min5Sealed system losing pressure with a cold-bottomed radiator and kettling
A sealed S-plan heating system in a two-storey 1990s house has an 18 kW heat-only boiler, a 12 L expansion vessel whose Schrader valve reads 0.4 bar with the system drained to zero, and a system volume estimated at 130 L. Cold fill was set to 1.5 bar when the boiler was installed eight years ago.
1,050 words, about 5 min