New Old House Plumbing Questions

[StreetDragster]

Hi all
Moved into a house, built in 2000 and i have some odd plumbing issues i wanted to ask about if anyone can help.

Firstly, the boiler, Combi, remeha avanta plus 35c.
Hot water and central heating works fine. But using the COLD water tap, in any bathroom/kitchen/hose causes boiler activity. I can't tell if it's just the pump that's running or if it's lighting, but open a cold water tap and 5 seconds later the boiler makes noise.
Why is this, is this a feature or is something broken/worn out?

Secondly, the showers are mixers. One of them constantly drips with the shower shut off. Do mixer showers have replaceable 'tap' washers or similar seals, or is a new shower module needed?
Mira, picture attached.

Thanks in advance

[StreetDragster]

xiodene said:

I had the same issue with my boiler while I was replaceing the bathroom. Apparently it is caused by air in the pipes. Do you have any dead legs in the pipework?

Not sure, how would i check? All the bathrooms are tiled so it's hard to figure out pipe routes.
I'll turn all taps on full blast tomorrow and see if any air gets chased out

[StreetDragster]

119 said:

Those look like standard pipe spacings so just replace the whole unit, especially as it over 20 years old.

Not worth the aggro imo.

Fair enough, they aren't too expensive

[StreetDragster]

I was trying to highlight, that I've moved into a new to me house, that isn't a new build

[StreetDragster]

Ok, new potentially stupid question, but what's wrong with my sink.
Just came to do the washing up, 1.5 sink, two plug holes, two plugs.

I can get the plugs to seal, the seals are a good 4-5mm up from the top of the waste.
They don't appear to press down or up, the outer part is tight and snug in the waste. Putting the 0.5 plug in the 1.0 sink is the same. What's going on? I didn't think there was different types of plug.

I'm not adverse to replacing the full waste and plug, but i didn't see this problem coming. I've just done the washing up in the bath lol

[StreetDragster]

Just closing this off.

In the end for the sink, i replaced both drain waste and plugs in one and that now works perfectly as you would expect. Still no idea why it didn't work before.

The shower, i have replaced the mixer unit, it was a nightmare, the hole spacing was fine but the pipe protrusion made everything difficult. Its done now and working fine, but i will admit, not my finest work. It'll be rectified when the bathroom is replaced.

The boiler, this i don't know about. I replaced the kitchen mixer tap and then the boiler stopped coming on with cold water use. Before it did it with kitchen tap, other taps, hose pipe etc, but now none of those things trigger it. No idea how but that'll do.

Thanks

[StreetDragster]

timetex said:

Are they 'plugs' or are they removable waste traps?

In my sink(s) you can spin them around. In one orientation they act like a plug and stop all water going down the plughole. In another orientation they allow the water to flow and trap the food and other detritus that gets into the sink - then you can easily just lift the whole thing out and knock it into the bin.

Yer, nothing as clever as that. Just a combined strainer/plug, that just appeared to be the wrong one for the waste.