Cold Boilers

[bugshaw]

The boiler has a habit of, once it has cut out because of the timer and/or thermostat and/or any other reason, not self-starting when the timer/thermostat triggers it on, so one has to press the reset manually. The lights come on on the timer quite happily, but the boiler doesn't fire up.

It has gone from doing this occasionally, to doing it most days, and today so far it has done it three times. By the time I notice (when my fingers stop working happily) the temperature has usually fallen to around 15-16 C.

I threw a lot of money at it when it was happening to the tenants this spring, and it hasn't been resolved satisfactorily. It's a five-year-old boiler in a five-year-old house, and passed a landlord gas safety check in September. I don't know what to do about it other than throw even more money at the sort of people who couldn't find anything wrong with it last time. I don't want to spend the winter with central heating/hot water that effectively runs on a 2-hour manual boost setting only.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I suspect the ebst thing to do is call in the service engineer. Boilers tend to be awkward.

[techiebabe.livejournal.com]

Blimey. 15-16C is what we ask ours to heat us up to.

That aside, I wish I knew what to suggest. Irregular faults are such a pain! Have you looked at boiler cover? I don't know if they cover you for grumpy boilers, or just broken ones.

[james-r.livejournal.com]

Do you have the make / model of the boiler? You're likely to be able to find the service manual online, which should have a debugging chart, which will likely tell you the problem is one of the following things that try to happen not doing, or not doing sufficiently:

Circulating pump starting
Flow switch activating
Flue fan starting
Flue flow sensor
Gas regulator
Gas ignitor
Ignition detection electrodes

Each thing usually goes in sequence, you can probably figure
out where it's going wrong by listening to it :) I can with
mine anyway..

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

John Lewis and Borders are selling microwavable cuddly toys ;) The cord on our bathroom light has just broken off (unfixably, by us anyway) so we're having to do all our ablutions in the dark. Am tempted to crack open some wine and bathe by candlelight ;)

[rhubarbfool.livejournal.com]

If the boiler collapses completely we have some electric convector heaters that are quite good that you can borrow. Also I'd recommend Compton and Parkinson as decent plumbing people.