No Hot Water And Carp Service

Well for the last 6 months we have had an intermittent leak from our system boiler (y plan) resulting every now and then with some water on the floor underneath the boiler itself.  The boiler is in our converted garage.

We have central heating cover, used to be with BG but now its with another ONE (annagram) who are always really slow to come out and have had 4 engineers who have not fixed the fault.

After i removed boxing in for them the last time, I could see it was a drain off valve  leaking and the guy said he resealed it.  This was about 2 months ago.

Came back home from work week last monday to find rcd had tripped and located fault to boiler (easy guess really as i could see the water on the floor). 

Phoned that ONE energy company and even though the Mrs has a disability and its going to cause her health & safety problems we still had to wait until friday for next available engineer.

Engineer guy turned up, i told him what the fault was, he said he would put a new seal in the drain off valve.  He needed to drain down system so i turned off water for him and left him to it.

Later made him a coffee, and he informed me the drain off valve had been stuffed with paper towel (obviously by previous dxxk head) and he has now properly sealed it.

He went round the house bled all of the rads but wouldnt go into the loft as we dont have proper loft ladders just use extending ladders, however i told him hot water cylinder etc is right by hatch.  He wasnt interested!

10 mins later he left and said everything sorted.

Friday night I was away and had a text from Mrs "loud grinding noise from loft, turned off heating as engineer has left it on"

Following morning another text from Mrs " no hot water, blah blah blah!!!!"

She called them up as i was in sunny wales Llangollen (first time in 10 years been away from home without Mrs) got to wait until thursday for them to come back out.

Got back home sunday, knocked  the hot water and heating on, but the pump in loft is now not working but it gets really really hot!  there was also loads of air in the pipes as the layout is pump then vertical section of pipework then 3 port valve then a little section of pipework leading to a soldered bleed valve which i loosened off to bleed the pipework.

So im thinking he had left the pump running for hours with no water going through and now its seized up.

However according to the Mrs its all my fault for going away last weekend!

Well I can't agree that it's because you went away, however it's still your fault!

You knew that there was a cylinder in loft and failed to ensure that the engineer had bled the system sufficiently. Systems have to be bled at the highest point to rid air. Particularly when pump is so high in system.

Yeah I should have been more assertive with him, but at the time was looking after my daughter (aged 7) along with her school friend and sister as there parents were stuck that morning, plus sorting out camping gear etc so running around like headless chicken last friday morning.

Then again, he knew pump, cylinder was in loft so he (engineer) was being lazy and should have known the consequences of not bleeding the system properly.

Its always going to be your fault your never gonna win there.... :yawn

CH cover seems to be a bit of a rip off, heard many stories of them refusing things for various reasons like this "Don't do ladders mate" rubbish.

Get to know some plumbers or try fix it yourself after all its only water lego.  ROTFWL

+1 to sorting it yourself.

If you are sufficiently capable to be an electrician, then basic plumbing tasks like draining down, replacing a drain valve and filling again are easy. You only really need to call in someone else if there's an actual fault with the boiler requiring a gas engineer.

And since he drained and re filled it, did he top up the inhibitor? No I didn't think so.

A stiff letter to the ONE company is in order to point out their shortcomings, cancel the contract, and demand compensation for the poor work, or a fefund of monies paid as they did not honour their contract.

Well two guys turned up, i told them what had happened friday so making their job easy as pie.  They managed to get the pump working again and bleeded the air from the pump and went round and done the rads again. 

They told me to get some x400 cleaner and run that through as the water is black from one of the rads so i'll be asking for help with that, but basically the guy said " Drain off some water from a rad, then put the x400 in the fill and expansion tank and then run it through the system for either 2 hours or couple of weeks depending what the instructions say."

Hopefully the pump has not been damaged but if it breaks they can come back and replace it.

Afterwards, whilst they were sat outside in their van (about 1 hour) i turned the heating on, made sure all the rads were working and found their was a bit of an air lock in the kitchen rad.  So I closed all of the TRV,s on all of the other rads around the house which then helped to get the kitchen rad back to normal.

Went round again and bled all of the rads and the pipe in the loft and loosened the screw on the pump (as instructed by engineer), im not sure but only a tiny trickle of water comes with the screw nearly off, so is this right?

You really need some inhibitor in the system. You leave it there for good, you don't just flush it through.

But I repeat, why oh why did they not do that in the process of draining and re filling?

If someone gave me that shoddy service, it would be once, and once only and I would not be paying them any more.

One problem with running cleaner through a system as I found to my expense and depending on what cleaner you use, is you could end up with leaks all over the place.

My house was 5 years old  and getting popping sound at the boiler, boiler manufacturer said run this cleaner through it for a few hours, then drain down, power flush and it will be ok.

Problem overnight leak at pump down through ceiling and stain all over hall ceiling and wall.

Leak 2, bathroom rad all over floor and onto landing carpet.

Probably crap install but did not expect to have that happen just from putting cleaner through.

Steve, perhaps thats why he told me to use Sentinel x400 as its non acidic.

TBH they have messed us about alot this year ie when we first had a leak in feb it took them 6 weeks to come out as we still had heating/hotwater so not classed as an emergency.

We were going to get rid of them just not got round to it. The way my mrs shouted at them the other day (call centre advisor) is probably why they had two blokes for backup today lol!

But they do deserve it as the leak has been going on for months, which i know if i had a local decent plumber to hand he would have fixed it in 1 visit.

I was told many years ago by a plumber that if you are draining the system down via the drain valve that it was a good idea to replace the small washer inside the drain valve as sods law says that after you have opened it and it hasn't been used in years it will leak as the heat from the CH system has hardened the rubber over the years, sounds like this is what has happened to you.

I had a small leak from the bathroom rad only when heating off, investigated to find that the chrome nuts had not been tightened, barely finger tight! And they call plumbing a skilled trade? Still nipped up now and leak cured.

As regards washers, always replace with new once disturbed particularly if not been disturbed for a while, as said the washers go hard after a period of time and are fine until disturbed. Had a claim against Hotpoint as engineer had replaced the inlet valves and not replaced the washers on hoses, subsequently had slow leak that only became apparent when the laminate lifted!!!!

If you were in London I could point you in the direction of a good plumber  :B-

Boiler packed up again tonight bad day explode   flashing sequence of lights is pointing to faulty fan or air pressure switch.  So now no hot water or heating as we found out tonight.

Now have been told I will have to wait until a week on friday before they will come out to have a look at it, then they will have to order the parts so it will probably mean coming back so many days later to do final fix!

Im definately going to cause them some grief this time and i will be calling them everyday to get it sorted sooner.

Right.

Fans ( last time I looked) were electric thingies - most boilers use 230VAC units - so testing `em is as easy as it can be.

Ditto for the switch  -it IS a switch. If the fan isn`t working, it won`t trip the switch, which tells the boiler that the fan has started.

Easily proven to work by GENTLY sucking / blowing on the small rubber tube attached to the switch - if the boiler goes into ignition sequence, and the fan isn`t running, then check for volts at the fan. If the fan doesn`t have volts, its either damaged wiring, or a blown fuse ( most likely).

Open it, and check it yourself - don`t let it scare you - you don`t have to touch the gas valve side of things.......

n.b. What make  / model is the boiler?

Hi kme, well got a bit of a result today and now the service company are coming out tomorrow

So dont feel as desperate to look myself.

The boiler is a glowworm micron which are apparently reknowned for dodgy pcb's.

If its the fan, then hopefully its just seized and they can get it running free whilst ordering a new one.

Im thinking about looking into the boiler scheme where you get one and pay it back through energy bill?

have a look at green deal robin,

saying that, Im getting a load of work at the mo going behind them sorting out their PP installs that arent working properly,  :slap

Spray the fan with some wd40 or the like. Had this on a Worcester boiler, sprayed fan wiped away excess and it ran for several more months before eventually being replaced.

Fan well and truly siezed, service engineer said he couldnt get it free running again so has ordered a replacement to be fitted this saturday.   So feel happy with that and it means I can still go to Elex on friday!

Robin Spark said:

Fan well and truly siezed, service engineer said he couldnt get it free running again so has ordered a replacement to be fitted this saturday.   So feel happy with that and it means I can still go to Elex on friday!

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See you there then Robin!

I`ll see you there, too