How safe is running water through a zinc housing?

[motoman]

Simon, Quinkand any other poor schmuck living in the Wessex region, your water comes from Wessex Water who seem to give more thought to the shareholders than the customers. When they went private they got rid of most of their enginees, gave themselves all new company cars and lose more water through broken pipes than any other water authority. Amen.

Pete

[Paul L]

I bet their lifestyle brochure looks great though!

(I still haven't worked out why utility companies bother to spend a fortune on branding and marketing given that there is little consumer choice but they do, at a fair cost, and it's comforting to know that our machines ar eused against backdrops of smiling kids, healthy labradors, soft clothes and slow motion scenes on sunny days.

Bit of a issue for a separate thread really of course, I bet we've all got a few improbable tales to tell of the hassle we've had from the modernism and efficiency drives)

Paul

[aloening]

Back to the techy stuff

There is a small brass pressure relief valve available from RS Components www.rswww.com Part No 398-9158.

I would fit a T in the feed line from the pump, then fit a long silicon rubber hose back to the tank of the machine with this valve on the end. Not as good as SS but Brass is not bad, and cheap enough to replace.

[simonp]

I looked at these before, and it seems they "pop" up and vent to atmosphere, there is no pipe connection on the vent, so may be tricky to put a pip on, unless one would fit over the knurled cap, whcih on the datasheet looks like 20mm diameter.

[aloening]

I think you could fix the valve to the end of the line - no need to connect a pipe to the nut - and then chuck it in the water tank. Will work just as well, although there will be a very slight change in pressure depending on the depth of water in the tank (1mBar per Cm depth approx). Actually would be better to suspend over the tank so it just drips into the water.

At about £12 each it is a very cheap solution

[simonp]

It's cheap enough to be wotrh trying anyway. If it wasn't for the whole redundancy thing I'd just buy one to try.