Volkera Condensing Boiler - froze, thawed, now not working

[coldinyorkshire]

My boiler a Mynute HE stopped worknig last night. We were told be a friend of a friend to defrost the condensing pipe - which we found was frozen solid.

Since we defrosted the pipe, the boiler can now run and heat the radiators and water, but it cuts out when it reaches about 67 deg C, and then cools down. During the cool down phase, the boiler seems to try to restart a number of times, then the red led on the right hand side of the panel comes on with error code 10.

If we turn the boiler off and on again giving it a few minutes to settle, the boiler heats up again to a top temp, and then repeats the process.

Water is dripping out of the condensing pipe when the boiler is operating, so it seems to be condensing ok?

Any pointers?

 

[JimH]

Al 10 is an ignition fault, I'm sure some of the experts on the forum will explain the types of damage expected when water in the condensate pipe freezes & backs up into the tray.

 

[villa_tom]

When a condense pipe freezes it backs up and floods the boiler - on some boilers this can do irrpairable damage to fans/pcb/aps etc and parts will need to be changed. If 10 is an ignition fault then it is likely that the water has backed up into the heat exchanger and damaged the ignition device or the flame detection device. Try leaving it off for a few hours and see if it drys out - if not call out a GSE

 

[fuzzy]

i agree with tom, see if it dries out, if not call a gse and he may have to replace the parts, lets hope he guesses right first time!

 

[coldinyorkshire]

Thanks for the tips. I've opened up the boiler and found a puddle of water in the base. Emptied this and found the condenser trap also full of water.

Emptied and restarted. The boiler fires up as before reaches about 67-70 deg C, then switches off with fault AL10 again.

Is the sensor electrode likely to need to be dried out? How do these work are they a thermistor?

None of the components other than the base and the condensor trap look to be wet.

 

[REDSAW]

dry it all out with a hair drier, top of con bottle contacts and pcb.

 

[Guitarse]

I'm having the same problem for the last two weeks, normally we clear the pipe, it fires up and were good, although it was also getting hot, then stopping and error 10 same as yours the other day. Now it's error 12 a few times till eventually error 10 reset and no ignition at all, nothing is dripping out of condensate pipe, it's hanging into a pan just now and nothing, although I've tried heating it all with a fan heater before till it fired up, this is no longer working.

No engineer till Monday now either and we have a kid here in the house.... cold Christmas

Thanks for any advice

 

[fixter1]

try drying it all out con trap are you getting any sparkin??? is the boiler lighting then going out or nothing at all

 

[Guitarse]

Think it's sparking yes, it's using gas as well, been taking meter readings so the gas is going somewhere (boiler is only gas appliance in the house).

No flame though, or at least the flame symbol isn't appearing between attempts on the display.

Is there any other way to clear water out the boiler, blast a hair dryer up the pipe or something into the boiler? that's prob a stupid question, but can ask for nothing or I can try anyway and blow it up :-/ or try syphen the fricken water out if it'll get it to light lol.

Fingers crossed it'll just turn over and clear it's self, but no luck so far.