I'd appreciate any thoughts and advise from people here on this one . I previously posted about this here //www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=849527#849527
Thanks for the responses to my previous post.
To summarize:
Over a month ago my Ideal Response 120 decided to leak water one morning. I have a service contract with Ideal themselves (although of course it's also Homeserve/Warmsure depending on what time of day you phone them..) so I called them and they sent engineers who replaced the air vent, the pressure relief valve and the expansion vessel.
This was about two weeks ago (yes it took them that long to get us back with hot water and heating but there you go...) . Since then the boiler has been working but it has been losing pressure more or less every day . I have to top it up to 1 bar each morning and the next morning it is down to less than 0.5 bar and so the CH doesn't come on automatically. To top it up only requires a two or three second burst on the filler loop valve, which sounds to me like about half a pint of water going in..?
I checked all my radiators and valves. I did found a very minor weeping on a joint of our bathroom heated towel rail . I tried to fix that and in the end I have closed off that radiator altogether . However, that had no effect on the pressure loss. I have left this radiator closed off anyway for now.
I have lifted floorboards on the ground floor and checked all downstairs pipework and joints with the system under pressure (both when hot and cold) and can find no leaks. Everything is dry..
I cannot inspect the upstairs pipework without doing some serious damage to my hardwood flooring , but I would expect some dampness on a ceiling by now if it was a leak up there..
I feel 95% certain that my pipes and rads are all okay...
Someone here suggested it could be a heat exchanger leak . Also, I have noticed that since the PRV, EV and air vents were replaced I tend to get some water dripping from the flue itself during the first 10 or 15 minutes of firing up (one drop every twenty seconds or so).This leaves a puddle on the patio which eventually dries up .. we never had this before..
I mentioned this to Ideal . They looked and said the HE looked okay but they sent someone round on Saturday to change the HE anyway. This has also had no effect on the pressure loss.
Ideal now want to send another engineer around but they are not being clear as to what that engineer will do or what they believe the problem to be. We have had five or six visits now, all requiring time off work, so the last thing I need is another engineer visting just to tell me that they can see no problem...
What I really want to do is get the boiler isolated from my rads/pipework for a day or two which, please correct me if I'm wrong, will prove once and for all if it is a boiler leak or a pipework leak ?
Then, depending on the result, I can either go away with my tail between my legs or I can start to put more pressure on Ideal to resolve the problem. Until that is proved , it seems that I am faced with further futile
days taken off work..
So far Ideal have not been very receptive to this idea of isolating the boiler.
Sooo....
Am I being reasonable to ask them to do this test ? If they don't want to do it, then can I pay another CORGI registered company to come in and do it for me... or would Ideal then try the old "you've invalidated your support contract cos you got some one else to work on your boiler " game with me ?
Sorry for the long post....
Thanks for the responses to my previous post.
To summarize:
Over a month ago my Ideal Response 120 decided to leak water one morning. I have a service contract with Ideal themselves (although of course it's also Homeserve/Warmsure depending on what time of day you phone them..) so I called them and they sent engineers who replaced the air vent, the pressure relief valve and the expansion vessel.
This was about two weeks ago (yes it took them that long to get us back with hot water and heating but there you go...) . Since then the boiler has been working but it has been losing pressure more or less every day . I have to top it up to 1 bar each morning and the next morning it is down to less than 0.5 bar and so the CH doesn't come on automatically. To top it up only requires a two or three second burst on the filler loop valve, which sounds to me like about half a pint of water going in..?
I checked all my radiators and valves. I did found a very minor weeping on a joint of our bathroom heated towel rail . I tried to fix that and in the end I have closed off that radiator altogether . However, that had no effect on the pressure loss. I have left this radiator closed off anyway for now.
I have lifted floorboards on the ground floor and checked all downstairs pipework and joints with the system under pressure (both when hot and cold) and can find no leaks. Everything is dry..
I cannot inspect the upstairs pipework without doing some serious damage to my hardwood flooring , but I would expect some dampness on a ceiling by now if it was a leak up there..
I feel 95% certain that my pipes and rads are all okay...
Someone here suggested it could be a heat exchanger leak . Also, I have noticed that since the PRV, EV and air vents were replaced I tend to get some water dripping from the flue itself during the first 10 or 15 minutes of firing up (one drop every twenty seconds or so).This leaves a puddle on the patio which eventually dries up .. we never had this before..
I mentioned this to Ideal . They looked and said the HE looked okay but they sent someone round on Saturday to change the HE anyway. This has also had no effect on the pressure loss.
Ideal now want to send another engineer around but they are not being clear as to what that engineer will do or what they believe the problem to be. We have had five or six visits now, all requiring time off work, so the last thing I need is another engineer visting just to tell me that they can see no problem...
What I really want to do is get the boiler isolated from my rads/pipework for a day or two which, please correct me if I'm wrong, will prove once and for all if it is a boiler leak or a pipework leak ?
Then, depending on the result, I can either go away with my tail between my legs or I can start to put more pressure on Ideal to resolve the problem. Until that is proved , it seems that I am faced with further futile
days taken off work..
So far Ideal have not been very receptive to this idea of isolating the boiler.
Sooo....
Am I being reasonable to ask them to do this test ? If they don't want to do it, then can I pay another CORGI registered company to come in and do it for me... or would Ideal then try the old "you've invalidated your support contract cos you got some one else to work on your boiler " game with me ?
Sorry for the long post....
