L
LostAlone
Hey guys.
I'm not a plumber, just a guy who's having some trouble with his boiler looking for some impartial advice before any money gets spent.
Here's the story -
A few days ago our boiler started acting up. We've never had a problem with hot water, but suddenly if you try to run a bath after a minute or so the water runs cold and the boiler won't heat any more water unless you turn it off and on again. You can run a sink full of water to wash up no problems, it's only if you run the tap for a couple of minutes that things start going wrong.
It's hard to describe what really happens - Just that if you leave the hot tap running, then after a couple of minutes you can't hear the boiler doing it's thing anymore. The green LED that normally shows the boiler is running goes out and then a little while later the red 'restart' button starts blinking red. If you hold it down then the boiler fires back up and soon enough you can get hot water again, but again only for a couple of minutes until it runs cold again.
We don't know if it's connected to our shower (bog standard electric wall mount shower) dying on us recently. It too started running out of hot water, but it took rather longer, only happened when my better half took really long showers. But then one morning when my GF tried to turn it on... Nothing happened. Not just no hot water, no water what so ever and not even the lights come on now, not even the 'service' one. No idea if these are connected though, just I didn't want to leave anything out.
So there's the problems we're having.
That's not exactly why I'm here though.
Thing is we called a plumber who came to have a look. He took the housing off and had a nose around and declared that we need a new boiler. I'm not saying I think he's wrong or I don't trust him, just it's a lot of money here and I need to be sure before I go any further.
What makes me a bit nervous is that he said that the inlet valve had been left open and running with the value open lead to a lot of parts being damaged (heat exchanger, water tank, something else too). Thing is that I have occasionally used the valve to top up the boiler and when it's open you can clearly hear it and the pressure gauge quickly jumps upwards. If the valve has been open it's been open for months on end, but the pressure has been consistently sitting in the green even when it's running hot and I certainly haven't heard anything extra running into the system.
So really I have a few questions that I wanted to get some impartial opinions on:
Is it possible that having the fill valve open could cause that kind of damage?
If the valve was left open, why would the pressure gauge still read as being ok the whole time?
What's causing the damage if the pressure on the system is reading as ok?
Do you think it's likely that we could have not noticed the valve being open for at least eight months (maybe longer)?
Why wouldn't we have seen any particular problems with either heating or hot water for all that time?
Can you see another answer for this set of problems?
Essentially - If I call someone else in to have a look are they going to tell me the same thing again?
Thanks for sticking with me, I know it's been a bit of a slog. Two grand for a new boiler is huge deal for us right now so it really matters to us to make sure that we aren't being taken for a ride. Let me know if there's any other information I can give you to help you figure stuff out and we'll see if we can't get a solid answer.
Cheers
I'm not a plumber, just a guy who's having some trouble with his boiler looking for some impartial advice before any money gets spent.
Here's the story -
A few days ago our boiler started acting up. We've never had a problem with hot water, but suddenly if you try to run a bath after a minute or so the water runs cold and the boiler won't heat any more water unless you turn it off and on again. You can run a sink full of water to wash up no problems, it's only if you run the tap for a couple of minutes that things start going wrong.
It's hard to describe what really happens - Just that if you leave the hot tap running, then after a couple of minutes you can't hear the boiler doing it's thing anymore. The green LED that normally shows the boiler is running goes out and then a little while later the red 'restart' button starts blinking red. If you hold it down then the boiler fires back up and soon enough you can get hot water again, but again only for a couple of minutes until it runs cold again.
We don't know if it's connected to our shower (bog standard electric wall mount shower) dying on us recently. It too started running out of hot water, but it took rather longer, only happened when my better half took really long showers. But then one morning when my GF tried to turn it on... Nothing happened. Not just no hot water, no water what so ever and not even the lights come on now, not even the 'service' one. No idea if these are connected though, just I didn't want to leave anything out.
So there's the problems we're having.
That's not exactly why I'm here though.
Thing is we called a plumber who came to have a look. He took the housing off and had a nose around and declared that we need a new boiler. I'm not saying I think he's wrong or I don't trust him, just it's a lot of money here and I need to be sure before I go any further.
What makes me a bit nervous is that he said that the inlet valve had been left open and running with the value open lead to a lot of parts being damaged (heat exchanger, water tank, something else too). Thing is that I have occasionally used the valve to top up the boiler and when it's open you can clearly hear it and the pressure gauge quickly jumps upwards. If the valve has been open it's been open for months on end, but the pressure has been consistently sitting in the green even when it's running hot and I certainly haven't heard anything extra running into the system.
So really I have a few questions that I wanted to get some impartial opinions on:
Is it possible that having the fill valve open could cause that kind of damage?
If the valve was left open, why would the pressure gauge still read as being ok the whole time?
What's causing the damage if the pressure on the system is reading as ok?
Do you think it's likely that we could have not noticed the valve being open for at least eight months (maybe longer)?
Why wouldn't we have seen any particular problems with either heating or hot water for all that time?
Can you see another answer for this set of problems?
Essentially - If I call someone else in to have a look are they going to tell me the same thing again?
Thanks for sticking with me, I know it's been a bit of a slog. Two grand for a new boiler is huge deal for us right now so it really matters to us to make sure that we aren't being taken for a ride. Let me know if there's any other information I can give you to help you figure stuff out and we'll see if we can't get a solid answer.
Cheers