Wanted to take the chill off this morning so fired up the heating. Worked for a while and got us up to 20°c but then no hot water. Worcester Bosch Greenstar combi, 6 years old and still under warranty. Engineer coming on Tuesday. Glad we found out now. Check your heating people!

Most boilers heat the hot water every day, so you know if it’s working or not within the day…

Yes, only yesterday we had a new boiler fitted at a not incosiderable sum of money.

Ours was working ok but the pump upstairs in the airing cupboard was replaced and part way through the test cycle the engineer went to look over the boiler.

Within 10 minutes he’d condemned it as the inner casing had split causing noxious fumes to leak and it was near dangerous levels.

We’ve never had a CO monitor and if we had it would have gone off.

Nearly two weeks later the new boiler is fitted and all lovely. New Nest thermostat and CO meter as well, so more toys for the wife to talk at…  ;o)

Ours died on Thursday. New PCB apparently, but they couldn’t source a new one on Friday.

<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”> Family swimming trip tomorrow, to get everyone bathed before school!</span>

I haven’t had hot water / heating for several weeks now.  I really should take the boiler to bits before winter sets in.

Sorry to hijack, ours is due for a service. It’s on borrowed time (15 years) and had a hiccough last week. “Service” will now be a quote for replacement, but what to do?

Like for like replacement (conventional boiler, HW cylinder (airing cupboard), open system) or combi

The plumber will see what’s what and give us options, but I wanted a heads up plz. The airing cupboard is handy, but could be replaced by a heated towel rail, or maybe a small rad inside.

So, mess, time involved, number of floors to come up, etc

TIA

Just ripped out my old boiler (Worcester 28i RSF junior) so if anyone is after some spare parts…

OP – sounds like a sticky motorised valve. My combi did similar last year after the summer layup.

i “forced” it by a couple of repeats of manually switching from heating only to hot water only etc.

by coincidence I’m having a new boiler fitted on Tuesday but nothing to do with that issue as that seems ok this year.

Combis are great but if they break down you have no hot water, where as a system with a cylinder can have an immersion heater as back up.

May I ask cougar have you been showering in cold water 😳

“May I ask cougar have you been showering in cold water 😳”

Or using his electric shower perhaps ?

Took me.over a year to get round to fitting a boiler in this house.

We used to boil the kettle for the dishes that couldn’t be put in dishwasher.

And electric shower for showering.

Seems to be that time of year – ours stopped working last week as the Gas supply valve packed up. 🙁

As already mentioned, test them now before it gets properly cold!

Like for like replacement (conventional boiler, HW cylinder (airing cupboard), open system) or combi

It depends on how much you want to free the space up and how much hot water you use.

A conventional boiler is simpler and more reliable than a combi but with a combi you are only heating the hot water you use.

If I didn’t need the space and use a lot of hot water I would keep the system you have and just renew the boiler.

If it’s the motorised valve that goes, with a small amount of spanering you can replace the gear motor within the head for around £11 from amazon.

It’s normally those that go and as long as you turn the electricity off they are an easy fix. Doesn’t need the water off as long as it isn’t an ancient system that may have a different type of valve fitted.

Most of the valve heads have a manual over ride spring return lever thing on them so you can operate it manually to test if it is the motor or not first.

Ours is an unvented system so slightly different but I think they use a similar valve in everything nowadays.

Cost wise, for our 15KW boiler fitting, we got quoted £2400 ‘after discount’ from British Gas and ended up with a reccomended local heating firm doing it for £1800 all in. A bit of a suprise as the house is only 12 years old and it was essentially one out, one in.

Still took two engineers 8 hours to do so not a quick job.

Wouldn’t fancy a quote for the whole system to be replaced !

We have a Baxi Combi and there was a software update available. Baxi came out FOC to do it and the guy was surprised the boiler was still working….

it had been making a loud boom when firing up and not always first time so it obviously had some ignition issues!

id had a local place look at it a few times but got sick of them as they didn’t seem to be able to do much other than replace parts.

Baxi bloke spent a good few hours and troubleshooted it all. Signed up for one of those 12 month plans at £17 a month, he came out the other week and replaced about half the boiler (all covered after the 30 day cooling off period).

could be worth it if yours is less than 8 years old as that seems to be the cut off.

£200 over the year but you know gonna be covered no issues….

Mine failed  about a month ago. I couldnt figure it out. I know  exactly how they work and there  was alot of head scratching . Checked gas train , sparks etc and all seemed fine . APS was’in’ as it got up to ignition mode.

Gave up and called in the gas man. After more head scratching he lowered  the elctrodes and hey presto.-ignition. He has never had a job where  the elctrodes  had somehow moved away from the gas ring and simply dropping them 5mm made it work perfectly. They are no a fixed bracket and no -one has touched it in 10 years …

Then he gave me the good news.. Fan bearings are shot and new  fan required . Not a problem I say , I have  a spare already.

Then last week the fan seized. Not only did the fan sieze, the 3 screws holding the fan mounting panel to the flame cupboard had also seized and rounded out. When you burn natural gas a small amount of acidic water is produced and this causes  corrosion.

Took a lot of drilling to get the offending screws out and new one in place.

My combi sends a slug of water round the rads after a longish burn cycle , to cool the HE I guess, so the diverter  valve and pump do not sit idle months  through the summer at ( WB24i)

Our house still has the original system boiler that was fitted 26 years ago. The fan is really noisy but it’s been fine for the 6 years we’ve been here. Having said that, it has started short cycling so I’m not sure how much longer it will last.

Ours went last week. A Worcester Bosch Heatslave oil combi boiler. WB engineer coming on Tuesday – did try a few local plumbers but none of them wanted anything to do with it. Hot Water had been on daily but as soon as we put the heating on last week the lock out light came on. Can re-set it and it stays on for a few minutes so at least we can get hot water, but I can’t sit in the utility room pressing the re-set button every 10mins all winter. Or maybe I can if it saves us the £350 to fix it.

Bookmarks thread and the WB failures have been noted.  After last Winter with endless days without heating or hot water reckon I’ll bite the bullet and replace my 10 year old WB.  Priority for tomorrow will be getting quotes.  Utterly sick of gas CH.

The plumber will see what’s what and give us options, but I wanted a heads up plz. The airing cupboard is handy, but could be replaced by a heated towel rail, or maybe a small rad inside.

I had my conventional boiler (25 years old) replaced with a combi boiler (Veissmann) a couple of months ago, also had the boiler relocated from kitchen to airing cupboard. My main reason for going for a combi was to get good water pressure for the shower (previous tank was at same level as the shower and unpumped).

Relocating to the airing cupboard freed up some more valuable kitchen space than what the airing cupboard provided (although I now have my spare towels and sheets shoved in a wardrobe)

I get the argument against combis that all your eggs are in one basket but I’d only used the immersion heater in the tank once in 20 years and I figure I can put up with cold water for a day or two it would take to get someone in to fix the combi.

I replaced my conventional system with a combi and moved it outside to get back a huge chunk of kitchen and simplify the pipe runs.

I don’t regret that at all.

That was 6 years ago and in that time the only thing we have had go wrong was a pressure sensor plastic moulding failed and the boiler lost pressure on the heating side and that took 3 days to sort .

We just used the stove Nd kettle again.

Thanks all, quote for a combi, attach the current shower and a small rad in the airing cupboard is being sorted

I’m sitting down 🙂

All sorted and working well. Great service from Worcester Bosch service engineers. Turned out to be a blocked condensate pipe. They also replaced a leaky pressure valve and gave it a service, all under warranty. Pretty thorough too as they were here for 2 hours.