[Closed] And now my boiler has packed up! Honestly, how many more things........

What make and model boiler is it?

Got to be something to do with the timer but not much more of use to say than that...

Vaillant turbo max Pro 28 according to the service record and was last serviced at the beginning of march 2020.

Egg timer symbol is, weirdly, the ignition indication. Does the light to the left ever come on? Flame with a line through it

Is the pilot light on ?

CCHA.ORG.UK "https://www.ccha.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Vaillant-Turbomax.pdf"

Instructions

As Flying Fox ... Make model and see if you can find the install manual online.
(Even our really crappy boiler I found the manual)
Can't believe ours made it this year... it's been a XMAS week issue for 3 years but hey ho.
I did have to remove the kitchen loop due to a leak but for once we had hot water and heating all XMAS...

Though I know what fails every year and I have a spare so realistically we're never stuck... it's just illegal for me to fix it.

If I did have to though I'd ask a mate who's a heating engineer ... but not on a public forum. 😉

I'd guess that symbol was a valve, so it might mean the gas supply is turned on. A common problem with boilers at this time of year is that the condensate drain freezes. Does it have one? Is there a pipe from the boiler going into a drainpipe? A plastic pipe, not a thin copper pipe with an open end.

Flashing egg timer indicates lack of water in system according to the manual. What does the pressure gauge read? It should be bottom right of the front of the boiler

Lordy, can't help with this one mate....hopefully someone on here can. Good luck Al.

Mine went on the fritz just before Christmas! Catastrophic failure, new boiler required, with fitting. About £5k, although I did get a £600 discount.
Oh well, it did need doing, the Baxi was 30+ years old, and it was done before Christmas.

This is what the pressure gauge shows. Always been told by the service engineers as long as it's in the green section it's OK. Is that right?

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Only pipe coming out of it is an open ended copper one out the back through the wall facing downwards, no plastic pipes or anything else anywhere.

Just tried it again and the flashing light is no longer flashing. It goes through the motions but still doesn't do anything. But now the ignition symbol with a line through it light is now lit up red.

Filling loop attached?

I'm no heating engineer btw

Page 6 of the pdf manual linked above.... May have gone into lockout mode and may need a reset.... Good luck!

Hmmmm...

Give the pressure gauge a good technical tap to make sure it's reading right and then reset the boiler and try again

The needle on the pressure gauge should be within
the green band (between 1 and 1.5 bar). If the needle
displays a value below 0.8 bar when the appliance is
cold, follow the instructions left by your installer to
refill the system. Alternatively, your installer should be
called to refill the system.

could be a false reading on gauge, I'd introduce water very slowly to see if it rises

Check the open ended copper pipe has not frozen (it could be the condensing pipe) pour hot (not boiling) water on the pipe if you can (assuming where you are is frozen) then reset the boiler

And yeah, as bruneep above try topping the pressure up to more than 1 bar (but not more than 1.5)

Vaillant have an in-house repair/insurance service that is very competitively priced, my mum subscribes to it. It (far) more than covered the cost of the repair for the whole year of cover, including callout. It was for the electronic board I think, on hers. Well worth contacting them and enquiring

Check the open ended copper pipe has not frozen

I don't think this is a condensing boiler, the copper pipe outside will be the pressure relief. Worth checking to see if there's any evidence of water coming from out though as that might indicate a burst pressure vessel, which can in turn lead to low water pressure, which can then give the symptoms gnusmas is seeing.

When ever mines played up it’s been lack of water pressure that’s caused it. Once topped up it fires up straight away. There’s two valves going in to the base of mine, one with a blue valve and one black which you need to turn on and off in sequence (can’t recall which at the moment though). Doing so you can hear the water going in to the system clearly and the pressure gauge rises pretty quickly. I’d definitely check pressure first as per @bruneep suggestion. Hope you get it sorted quick.

Always been told by the service engineers as long as it’s in the green section it’s OK. Is that right?

I've got experience of Valiant Ecotec(?) and Ideal 30 boilers. Both need to be 1.5 bar in order to work. Looks like yours hasn't got enough water in the system. If there is a filling loop, look up the manual for instructions on how to top it up. It's dead simple but make sure it doesn't go much above 1.5. HTH.

Overheat safety cut out popped ?
Was it running today then stopped ?
Usual electronic start up. Switch it off then on again.
First try Hot tap to see if it will run the HW side
No Joy there , then off at the wall again, then on with CH 'on'
Usual start up with the CH is fan on roughly 10 seceonds purge flame cabinet
Then Gas train opens up ,- Click / Snap noise
Then Spark plug fire , its not a spark plug but an a rod. will bbbuzzzzz usualy
Could be so many things , frozen condense or Air pressure switch going wonky

Ignition indicator (yellow)Illuminates when gas valve, operatorand ignition transformer are energised. This indicator remains onduring burner operation.(A flashing indicator shows lack ofwater or poor water circulation incentral heating system)

You need to get onto the out of hours service for your housing provider (they will 100% have one). We carry out all no heat and hot water visits within 4 hours and they all do the same if they are a regulated housing association.

On the repair front id boost the pressure to 1.5 bar min and turn it off for ten minutes. Turn it back on and run your hot tap and see if the pilot ignites.

I'd second pressure bring an issue - ours cuts out if it's too low. There should be 2 valves underneath with a filling loop to add more mains water to the system. Open both and the pressure reading should rise. Close them both when it's closer to 1.5 bar and fingers crossed.

You are at the bottom end of the pressure range - even though it's technically in the green, it's possible it drops below the cutoff threshold during initial startup. As above, take it up to 1.5 bar with the filling loop, wait a bit, then have another go.

Pressure looks a bit low 🤔
My vailant slowly loses pressure and stops working at about 0.5 bar..
It's a simple job to re pressurize it..

And the pressure gauge you can see is only an (inaccurate) indicator. There's an internal sensor that the boiler uses to decide to start or not. Switch the whole thing off, pressurise the system a good bit and start it up. If it still refuses to go, keep pressing the ignition button.

I'd say pressure too.

Got pics of the valves n stuff under the boiler

Ours is losing pressure this last week and the shower is going hot and cold. I turned it off and pressurised it twice in the last week (found a youtube video with info, as our old boiler had an external loop where this one has a key and a tap)

It works-ish, but creeps back down to 1.0 in a day or two. Had the plumber to look briefly and hope they won’t be pulling up the carpets and floorboards if can’t find a system leak above the floor.

As others say, could be just a matter of pressure. Maybe bleed off your rads also.

I've gone through what I can from the suggestions, tha kyou very much to you all for them. It's doing exactly the same and still won't light. Thinking about it, it's had low pressure since the last service and hasn't seemed right. Before that service though it was really good and the house seemed to warm up a lot easier too.

When it happened earlier I was running the hot water in the kitchen and suddenly it went cold. Think I'll wait til the morning and try and get hold of someone before I more than likely mess it up even more.

Here's this winter's experiences with fixing boilers.

Mine:
Start of winter - low pressure. Needed the air let out of the radiators and for it to be refilled with refilling loop.

Not long after - can't keep flame lit and lots of grumbling/cavitation noises. This was fixed by pulling off the plastic condensate drain pipe and catching the water that came out as it was blocked.
Did that again last night actually.

Girlfriend's:
Water pressure kept dropping - needed refilled every day or two. Water was dribbling out of drain on the outside wall.
This was due to an air bladder inside losing pressure which was due to a faulty valve. I'm not sure exactly of terminology, she got someone out to fix it.

Engineer has just left, turns out the pump was knackered. Luckily he managed to source one locally and fitted it this morning. Boiler is working nicely at the moment and is trying to warm the house up from the fridge it became over the past few days. Temperature in the house the past couple of days was just under 7 degrees. At least that is now sorted. Thanks for all the replies and helpful suggestions.

Nope, I'm still cursed. Whu I thought something might actually go smoothly for me I really don't know. Within an hour of it being fixed this happened.

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Switched it off over an hour ago and its still like it. The pin went down to the red and then raised back up to there again. They said they will be here in the morning to try and sort it out, so another cold evening for us all.

Have you tried bleeding the radiators?

lots of air, getting all warmed up, will increase the pressure quite a lot

bleed the rads as a first thing to do

If the pump was goosed it may well have been letting air in to the system.

+1 on tapping the gauge if you haven't tried that already. Its a genuine suggestion as the needle can get stuck some times.

and +1 on trying to bleed the radiators to help reduce the pressure. Be careful that the rads are not still boiling hot otherwise you could burn yourself.

When the boiler was cold what was it pressurised to? Also did you put the flame on full to get the house up to temp?

If the boiler has been filled with cold water towards the top end of the scale and then heating is turned to absolute max then due to the higher water temp, the pressure can rise above the normal operating zone. You may not see a problem heating on mid power as the water temp is lower.

Just finished bleeding them, they were pretty cool though. A fair bit of air in 2 of the radiators upstairs and it's dropped to just above the green, around 2.1 on the gauge. Guessing the pump probably let some air in as suggested.
I've tapped the gauge a few times and still the same.
I've left the boiler on the setting the engineer put them at this morning, not on full but about 3/4. It was pressurised to 1.7 ish on the gauge.
Now the pressures released a bit I've just switched it back on. In that few minutes it's raised back up to 2.4 on the gauge. Think it's slowed down a little now but will keep an eye on it.

There is an internal Pressure release valve but you shouldn't officially open up the boiler.
You could try a bleed on a radiator then let some more fluid out into a container/towel.

As others already said as it warms up any air in the system will expand so you may need to do it a few times.

You'd need to let out loads before inhibitor becomes an issue.

Pressure has risen to the red again. I've checked all the radiators and there's no cold spots on them anywhere but they're too hot to try bleeding again at the moment. Will try bleeding in an hour or so to see if any more air comes out.
I rang them up and explained what was happening and they said he's booked for tomorrow anyway so if I still need the visit it will go ahead as planned.

You are bleeding the radiators with the heating switched OFF aren't you?

This could be an expansion vessel issue. I had this on my last boiler. Basically as the water heats up it expands and there is a vessel in the boiler which has a rubber bladder in it which can expand to accommodate the expansion of the water. Eventually they fail (some boilers faster than others!) so you bleed the system and it’s full to capacity and there’s no where for the expanded water to go so the pressure builds up until the pressure release valve is activated - it dumps the excess out and the pressure drops.
Some boilers have an easy to access expansion tank - some are a pain to get to like mine was so I just installed an external expansion vessel on the return line of the central heating which was much larger than the internal boiler one. Problem solved for about £40 (I fixed it myself) and being as my boiler was in a cellar there was loads of space to put the new vessel in.
It’s quite easy to diagnose but it’s often missed as a problem. It might be that the expansion vessel has lost its pressure which is a simple fix.
At least you have someone coming to fix it!
Maybe to keep the heating on longer without it over pressurising you could turn the temp of the central heating water down a bit.

Not a heating engineer or plumber - but have had a similar issue before. If you think you've bled the air out of the system and you still have the big pressure swings it sounds like an expansion vessel fault. You can (very carefully) release pressure using one of the radiator bleed valves but this will probably result in you finding the pressure gauge being at 0 when cold.
RM.
EDIT: 18 seconds. 🙂

One way of sorting it temporarily is to drain some water from a higher rad so the rad itself works as an expansion vessel. It’s hard to drain a lot of water off though if you’re not sure how to do it.

Try bleeding again once the radiators are cool again to just double check all the air is out the system.

If the house is very cold and you need some heat, you could try running the heating on a lower setting and/or bleeding some more water out the system. Possibly those things are enough to keep the heating going without the pressure going into the red.

I've just moved house. When the heating was running the pressure went up to 3.5 bar 😲

I bled the rads (without the pump running, as above, otherwise you can be sucking air in rather than out). Got next to no air coming out, but maybe a pint of water cumulatively. The pressure's bob on now.