Boiler broken?

Emjay86

Emjay86

Emjay86

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Joined
2 Apr 2011
Posts
1,075
Location
Wales
Hey guys,

Im having issues with my boiler and it all started happening when I had a service from British Gas about 2 months ago. Basically it either happened directly after or a couple of days after that service the shower would heat up and then after say a minute it would drop to freezing temps and not warm up again, the boiler wouldn't kick in to heat up the water.

To combat this I was turning the hot tap on in the sink which would then get the hot water moving around and into the shower.

Once I had started doing this the British Gas engineer came out again to install a filter onto my boiler (A combi boiler btw!) and he had to fix the flue in the loft as apparently it wasn't fastened to anything. We told him of the issue and he had a look himself as well as got a collegue to come over and look with him. They both said that the problem was with the mixer tap on my shower and I need to get a plumber out to fix it, if the plumber then says its the boiler then they will come out and look again.

Anyway since then the hot tap in the bathroom isn't making the boiler turn on neither is the one in the kitchen. Im basically having speed showers at the moment!

Then as of last night my boiler has started making really loud noises when heating up. Its working fine for the radiators btw. The noise is a really loud vibrating kind of whirring noise. It sounds like there's a big fan in there or something.

Ill be calling British Gas on Monday but I figured I could ask here as to what you guys think. Any ideas?
 
No fault codes and its a Worcester combi from the bosch group. Its part of the R 25 & 30 HE combi range. Im not sure how old it is as ive lived in this house for just over a year but the time before the last service the engineer from British Gas said its very good one and is in perfect shape.
 
Im sat downstairs at the moment and the boiler is on heating the radiators and it sounds like a car is outside my window with the engine switched on. Definitely doesn't sound right!

Ive checked the pressure on the gauge also and it was really high yesterday so I dropped it right down by bleeding the radiators and the pressure seems to be ok now although the gauge never seems to indicate the correct pressure to me. My reason in thinking this is that one day I checked the gauge, all seemed fine it was at the lower end of the 'green zone' on the gauge. Without any heating going on, hot water being used or anything like that it was then beyond the highest point of the 'green zone' and I had to bleed the radiators to drop it. Not sure what could cause the pressure to increase like that.
 
Last edited:
billybob89 said:
Do you get hot water from other taps and presumably the radiators are heating up fine?
Click to expand...

Radiators are fine but the taps are little touch and go. The way to get the shower warming up is to turn the sink tap on hot but then it wont keep the boiler heating water up if you leave it on. Ive managed to run the sink and bath taps on hot for a good 5 mins before with it consistantly heating and other times it has cut out after a minute or so with the sink tap.

My kitchen sink downstairs too usually works fine but sometimes it will start going cold whilst its meant to be hot, it does tend to go back hot again though so I presume its just working through the hot water before it heats more up.

Thanks for the feedback.
 
Sounds like a diverter valve to me, ive had similar in the past on a vaillant, and it was the micro switches in the diverter valve that failed.
 
Tinders said:
Sounds like a diverter valve to me, ive had similar in the past on a vaillant, and it was the micro switches in the diverter valve that failed.
Click to expand...

I used to have to replace the micro-switch once every couple of years on our old Vaillant, and just had to do it on our current Ideal too, causing random hot water dropouts. There is also a very thin pipe which gets blocked up causing the DV to move very slowly, but this usually means the hot water doesn't come on in the first place.
 
I was just cleaning the oven downstairs and had the hot water tap on but at a low pressure coming out of the tap and it didn't get hot once over about 10 minutes. Only when I put the pressure up a bit did the boiler kick in.

Is this indicative of anything?

Cheers again.
 
So the British Gas engineer came out today and said the fan was broken in the boiler which was causing the vibrating/car engine noise, hes fixed that and its fine again. He said we also had a problem with the water in the house and hell fix that on Friday. He mentioned something about our stop tap being full? No idea what that means.
 
Boiler got fixed on Friday! I had a hot shower for the first time in almost 2 months and it was great.

It turned out the fan was broken which was causing the vibrating and general noiseyness and there was something else with the boiler that was broken, some sort of lid or something my other half said. Interestingly the first British Gas engineer who double checked it with a collegue said my shower mixer was broken. Turns out its now fixed because of this water thingy in the boiler.

All in all the problem was solved for the excess of £99 and im warm again...
 
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