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I have an old valiant boiler, 15-20+ years old. Nothing actually wrong with it, but in the winter the water at the taps isn't as hot as I would like. Fine in the summer, I guess water coming off the main is warmer??
Are there any tricks to get an old boiler to heat the water more or is the only real answer it time to get a new one?
Don't turn tap so far on? Is it maybe flowing too quickly to get real heat?
DickBarton
Don’t turn tap so far on? Is it maybe flowing too quickly to get real heat?
We had a bloke round at the tail end of last year to fix our old boiler. We asked him about the options for replacing it in the new year & he mentioned combi boilers.
He said that he has to teach people how to use them, as they whack the tap full open & wonder why the water doesn't get any hotter than luke warm. He said it's far better to have less flow from the hot water & use the cold tap to get to the temp required.
Hard water area? Our 10 yr old boiler’s heat exchanger was totally scaled up and since replacing actually produces properly hot water.
If it’s working and set up properly you really shouldn’t need to reduce the flow at the tap manually.
Insulate the pipe from boiler to tap?
If it's got a digital controller, you may be able to set the output temperature (you can on our 7 year old Vaillant).
You should be able to take the secondary heat exchanger out and clean it inside with brick acid. Make sure the hot water isn’t set too high (60c max) as higher can cause scale build up. Could also be that the primary heat exchanger isn’t working well, is the CH Ok?
Have you checked the boiler is operating at the correct pressure?
Trace heating.
Turn it up, on ours you can set the temperature it heats the water to.
It doesn't get there this time of year as the incoming water is so cold.
Do you have a "comfort mode" option? Switch that on.
Look at me, combi boiler "expert" having owned one for two months of my life. (-: