Hi folks,
Just thought I'd throw this in for future reference, it might come in useful to someone someday.
You know the sort of fault I mean ?, the boiler is working, then it cuts out, so you switch it off, then later on you switch it on again, and it probably works OK, then it goes off again.
So you call a heating engineer, and he arrives, and the boiler works just fine, he pretends to have a look, shrugs his shoulders, and states the obvious, which is, that it's working OK now, that the cause of the,
" fault ", is a mystery to him, and that you're an idiot for calling an engineer who has a callout charge.
So he goes away, and you call another engineer, who doesn't have a callout charge, and who, amazingly, conducts what appears to be a proper inspection, ( perhaps this fact is not unconnected with the absence of a callout charge ? ), and who also, again amazingly, actually seems to know something about fixing boilers.
He eventually concludes that there is a fault within the main gas valve mechanism, which in this case, ( a large floor standing boiler ), is a rather large chunk of metal which is doubtless full of tiny valves and various components.
He takes it out, and fetches and fits a new one, and it works, problem solved !.
The old unit goes back to the manufacturers for refurbishment and future re-use.
So what was the cause of the fault, and why was it intermittent ?.
Well, he says, no one will ever know for sure, until the unit gets stripped down for refurbishment, but one possibility is a broken spring that operates a valve inside the unit, apparently it can sometimes happen that a spring will break, causing the valve to shut, so you switch the unit off, and the spring cools down.
When it cools down, it contracts, just enough so that it again is able to operate correctly, so you relight the boiler, the spring heats up and eventually it expands to the point where it again ceases to work, and the boiler fails again.
So,.....if your boiler ever trys to drive you crazy, this might be the reason why.
Just thought I'd throw this in for future reference, it might come in useful to someone someday.
You know the sort of fault I mean ?, the boiler is working, then it cuts out, so you switch it off, then later on you switch it on again, and it probably works OK, then it goes off again.
So you call a heating engineer, and he arrives, and the boiler works just fine, he pretends to have a look, shrugs his shoulders, and states the obvious, which is, that it's working OK now, that the cause of the,
" fault ", is a mystery to him, and that you're an idiot for calling an engineer who has a callout charge.
So he goes away, and you call another engineer, who doesn't have a callout charge, and who, amazingly, conducts what appears to be a proper inspection, ( perhaps this fact is not unconnected with the absence of a callout charge ? ), and who also, again amazingly, actually seems to know something about fixing boilers.
He eventually concludes that there is a fault within the main gas valve mechanism, which in this case, ( a large floor standing boiler ), is a rather large chunk of metal which is doubtless full of tiny valves and various components.
He takes it out, and fetches and fits a new one, and it works, problem solved !.
The old unit goes back to the manufacturers for refurbishment and future re-use.
So what was the cause of the fault, and why was it intermittent ?.
Well, he says, no one will ever know for sure, until the unit gets stripped down for refurbishment, but one possibility is a broken spring that operates a valve inside the unit, apparently it can sometimes happen that a spring will break, causing the valve to shut, so you switch the unit off, and the spring cools down.
When it cools down, it contracts, just enough so that it again is able to operate correctly, so you relight the boiler, the spring heats up and eventually it expands to the point where it again ceases to work, and the boiler fails again.
So,.....if your boiler ever trys to drive you crazy, this might be the reason why.