Boiler controller

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RizzoTheRat

Original Poster:

25,167 posts

192 months

Thursday 28th April 2016
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The controller/timer for my boiler was claiming it was 12:65 and not responding to any of the buttons last night.

It's a Potterton EP2001, and have had a hunt online found the Potterton EP2 is supposed to be a direct replacement, so one should be arriving today and I'm hoping it's simply a case of swapping it over and keeping all the connections the same, but I'd like to have an idea how it's working just in case.

As far as I know the central heating is pumped, and the hot water is gravity fed. The boiler is a fairly old Ideal Mexico Super 2.

I've not taken the old controller off so far to know how many wires, but there's 4 cables coming out of it
1 to the power switch
2 to different bits of the boiler that look like 3 core mains cable
1 follows the pipes up towards the airing cupboard

Power's obvious, I'm guessing the one going upstairs is to a thermostat?

The wiring diagram on the boiler shows the supply as Earth, Neutral, LiveP and LiveB. I assume one of the lives is for the heating and the other for the hot water, so one of those cables will be a 4 core. What's the other cable doing? The wiring diagram shows the pump being powered from within the boiler so presumably not that.


RizzoTheRat

Original Poster:

25,167 posts

192 months

Friday 29th April 2016
quotequote all
EP2 turned up last night and I've got to say I'm very impressed with Potterton. The electrical connections are all on the backplate, and the new controller is compatible with the old (definitly more than 10 years, probably 20+) backplate, it has metal contact pins that slot in to sockets on the backplate. So all I had to do was unclip the old one, clip the new on in place, and then set it up.

silversurfer1 said:
Straight swop and set to gravity for you both
Does the pumped CH just work automatically from the builer with no input from the controller then? In which case I'm guessing the pumped options on the controller is to control a separate pump?

I assumed as it had a pump that I should go with pumped, and it seems to be working ok, is it likely to be causing a problem somewhere though? I'll switch it over to gravity tonight and see what happens


Edited by RizzoTheRat on Friday 29th April 13:05

RizzoTheRat

Original Poster:

25,167 posts

192 months

Friday 29th April 2016
quotequote all
I'm worried it might be causing problems on the wrong setting so will be changing it over tonight. I'm hoping it's just powering a terminal that's not connected to a pump that isn't there, rather than powering something that shouldn't be powered.

RizzoTheRat

Original Poster:

25,167 posts

192 months

Friday 29th April 2016
quotequote all
No idea on valves. All I know is when the heating cuts in you can hear a pump start up (I'm guessing the one that's mentioned on the wiring diagram in the boiler), but I don't get that when the hot water comes on.

RizzoTheRat

Original Poster:

25,167 posts

192 months

Saturday 30th April 2016
quotequote all
Cheers, I've switched it over to gravity now.