There has been a massive spate of boilers packing up around here recently due to the cold weather. In almost all cases this is because the condensation pipe has blocked up with ice.

If your's goes chips during the next few, (bleeding freezing) weeks check this out first, and possibly save yourself a bill. The condensate pipe is generally made of plastic and drains to an outside grid*

* – usual disclaimers apply to this description 🙂

check what out?

Um, that the condensation pipe isn't blocked up with ice. Wasn't that clear from the OP?

Served you right for having an eco-friendly condenser boiler. My 1960s beast will melt anything with its red hot exhaust 😉

OK what does it mean if my pump is noisy and some rads are cooler than others?

Your pump is ****? I love quizes 🙂

Pump is about to die, and your rads are full of air.

Strange, was going to post this as a PSA just now.
It happened to my mates boiler last night, well 8am this morning. He has a condensing combi, and I think i am right in saying its only these that are affected. The boiler started making a strange gringing noise similar to a low speed dentist drill, at regular intervals. Turns out it was the condence drain outlet blocked with a large icile between the outlet and the drain .
He has been running it 24 hours as his missus is one of those girls who is permanantly cold.
He was going to try to double insulate it ( it already has std lagging ) with a 120mm waste pipe, with a long slot cut in , then slotted over the existing insulation.
The other idea we came up with was to fill up the drainpipe with those water softener granules. They will take forever to be broken down by the condesate coming from the boiler, but will salt the water enough to stop it freezing. A peice of gauze or satsuma bag over the end held with a jubilee clip would stop the granules falling out, Does require a saw, a double female connector , and some epoxy weld .

Sorted the mother-in-laws with three bales of hay jammed up against the outside run of pipe (pat pending).

Some novel ways to prevent reoccurance here. Loving the salt tablet idea! Myself, I've just left the top screws out of the pipe clips outside, it's only a short run of push-fit so I'll just pull it off to clear it every couple of days.

a double female connector

taken in the context intended without a snigger

tthew – Member
Some novel ways to prevent reoccurance here. Blah, blah, blah I'll just pull it off to clear it every couple of days.

This advice is especially useful for all you singletons out there…

Yep. Our bioler packed in and after a bit of reading opn the internet I realised this was the issue so spent about two hours pouring boiling water over it (which didn't fix it). The pipe doesn't even go down it's completely horizontal so the water just sits in it and freezes. Because we have British Gas homecare, we had to wait for them to get someone out so we had no heating or hot water for almost three days.

British Gas guy came round, took one look at the pipe and sawed it off where it comes out of the wall.

"We'll come back when we're quieter and put the pipe in properly", he said. "which cowboys put that one in?", he asked.

This was the moment I'd been waiting for…..

"British Gas."

Just spent a couple of hours trying to thaw ours, unfortunately the boilers upstairs in the airing cupboard and the cowboy who installed it used thin plastic pipe with no insulation.
Going to have to get up a ladder tomorrow 😥

Both our combi and my Mum's combi had this problem Thursday / Friday.

Our plumber had over 40 calls from people with the same problem on Friday. He said the manufacturer testing only goes down to -10. A kettle full of hot water sorted it for us.

Mum's plumber cut the drain pipe just below the boiler so it drains into a bucket and they are coming back once the weather improves.

I would just pop around the corner and get my m8 who works for BG so sort it out, only costs me a few beers 😆