Anyone know anything about central heating boilers?

[mybrainhurts]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Uh, oh...I predict trouble ahead...

[Dr_Rick]

I take it all back, I thouroughly recommend a Vaillant ecoTEC exclusive 838. Turns out the boiler was fine and had shut itself down to save us fromt he ineptitude of Scottish Gas or whoever is in charge of supply. SG were doing some work replacing iron pipes with plastic a few streets away and had put in a link pipe that was too small and as a result were throttling the gas pressure for about 50 houses - low pressure for all.

I called the gas board who declared that hte world was coming to an end and that I should shut of naked flames (wood burner was our only heat for hte last few days), open the windows and doors and don't use any electrical items. Told them to get stuffed. The engineer was with us within the our and promptly shut down the remaining gas supply to the house ... until he was over-ruled by his boss and he switched it back on.

At least with Scottish Water you tell them you have a problem and they tell you that they are doing works in the area, or they register a problem and deal with it. The engineer hadn't been told of the works elsewhere - left hand - right hand.

Dr Rick

[andy43]

Dr_Rick said:

I take it all back, I thouroughly recommend a Vaillant ecoTEC exclusive 838. Turns out the boiler was fine and had shut itself down to save us fromt he ineptitude of Scottish Gas or whoever is in charge of supply. SG were doing some work replacing iron pipes with plastic a few streets away and had put in a link pipe that was too small and as a result were throttling the gas pressure for about 50 houses - low pressure for all.
Dr Rick

Did the original fitter put a magnaclean or similar on the return to the boiler? Our system is nearly 40 years old in places - we have a magnaclean which went in with our boiler and thermal store about 18 months ago and I clean it out maybe every six months now - it does collect quite a lot of crap.

Edited by andy43 on Thursday 5th November 09:31

[Dr_Rick]

andy43 said:

Dr_Rick said:

I take it all back, I thouroughly recommend a Vaillant ecoTEC exclusive 838. Turns out the boiler was fine and had shut itself down to save us fromt he ineptitude of Scottish Gas or whoever is in charge of supply. SG were doing some work replacing iron pipes with plastic a few streets away and had put in a link pipe that was too small and as a result were throttling the gas pressure for about 50 houses - low pressure for all.
Dr Rick

Did the original fitter put a magnaclean or similar on the return to the boiler? Our system is nearly 40 years old in places - we have a magnaclean which went in with our boiler and thermal store about 18 months ago and I clean it out maybe every six months now - it does collect quite a lot of crap.

Edited by andy43 on Thursday 5th November 09:31

Funnily enough this was mentioned by me to him last year about the time of replacing all the radiators (but not the pipes). I know the MagnaClean is only about £100, but the budget was totally blown last year by replacing 18no radiators (some 2.4m long) and a boiler. But he did put some inhibitor in the system and its been fine.

This year, he's mentioned the MagnaClean again as part of the annual maintenance of the system and I reckon we'll go for it.

Dr Rick

[SS2.]

Dr_Rick said:

This year, he's mentioned the MagnaClean again as part of the annual maintenance of the system and I reckon we'll go for it.

Well worth the investment, IMHO.

Long story, but we ended up having to replace our boiler because of the amount of rust & crap that had come to rest in the heat exchanger. I'd be 99% certain that a MagnaClean would have avoided the problem, or at least it would have alerted us to the problem before it was too late.

And yes, we did find and fix the cause of the rust build-up before fitting the new boiler..