Hoping someone can help diagnose whether the blocked plate head exchanger in my mum’s combi boiler is down to the heating waterway or mains waterway.
Issue is that she only gets around a basin’s worth of hot water before the tap runs cold. No issue with water pressure from tap, and central heating unaffected.
She’s now had visits from two plumbers, who both diagnosed the issue as a blocked plate heat exchanger and flushed it out. This fixes the problem for around a month, so seems to be the cause.
The problem is now back so it seems she needs to deal with the underlying cause of the blockage. Based on what I’ve read it seems to me the issue is sludge in the central heating system blocking the heating waterway that needs a power flush to sort.
However, my mum is fairly sure the second plumber told her the issue is with the quality of mains water coming in e.g. due to nearby building works. This doesn’t make sense to me as I’d expect a reduced flow of water if the mains waterway were blocked, rather than a dropoff in temperature. She’s also not had any issues with the mains water over the past few months. Questions are, therefore -
Issue is that she only gets around a basin’s worth of hot water before the tap runs cold. No issue with water pressure from tap, and central heating unaffected.
She’s now had visits from two plumbers, who both diagnosed the issue as a blocked plate heat exchanger and flushed it out. This fixes the problem for around a month, so seems to be the cause.
The problem is now back so it seems she needs to deal with the underlying cause of the blockage. Based on what I’ve read it seems to me the issue is sludge in the central heating system blocking the heating waterway that needs a power flush to sort.
However, my mum is fairly sure the second plumber told her the issue is with the quality of mains water coming in e.g. due to nearby building works. This doesn’t make sense to me as I’d expect a reduced flow of water if the mains waterway were blocked, rather than a dropoff in temperature. She’s also not had any issues with the mains water over the past few months. Questions are, therefore -
- Am I correct that the mains supply issue doesn’t make sense?
- If the issue is with the heating waterway, is a powerflush the most realistic solution?
- What on earth is the fix if the issue is with the mains?!