Help! No hot water or CH in new flat

[Ravster]

Hello hope someone can help! Posting on behalf of a friend: who has no hot water or CH in a flat she moved into last week. This is what I know:

- When she moved in there was some hot water!
- The theromstat is turned on fully
- The controller appears to work, i.e. at the prescribed times it turns on the water pump, which makes a normal water pump noise, and fires the boiler
- The boiler (sorry don't know the make/model - will check tonight) pilot is always on, and when the controller program is on, the boiler fires for a while. There is a controller on the front of the boiler, which, when I turn it to the max position fires the boiler
- The hot water pipe from the boiler seems to be warm, though this might be because the boiler casing is warm
- Back to the hot water tank: the temperature sensor on it seems to be turned up to 60 degC; and I tried turning it up further
- There is no hot water in the tank - the tank is stone cold!! Pipes to/from the tank are all stone cold. The pipe around the pump is warm probably because the pump is warm
- It seems to me although the pump is on it doesn't seem to be pumping hot water around the circuit
- The diverter valve has a manual switch to On, nothing seems to change if I manually open the valve

Any idea why hot water isn't getting to the hot water tank??
Should I reset the programmer and start again?

Thanks in advance

 

[RigidRaider]

Can you hear the bloke in the neighbouring flat having lots of hot baths and showers? Perhaps you're heating his water!

Seriously though - and I expect other more experienced plumbers will be along soon to correct me - but when we recently had a mysterious "no hot" problem like this we discovered that the motor on a valve had died. My retired plumber neighbour told me that this is not uncommon and it would be worth replacing the motor, although I would be taking the risk that the problem might be the actual valve sticking. Since moving the manual lever seemed to work and since operating the boiler controls didn't produce even the smallest effort from the motor I replaced it and we've had no problems since. The plumber's merchant did warn me that they do not refund unused motors so the risk was mine.

Are you sure holding the valve open with the little lever doesn't allow hot water to pass through the pipe when all systems are "go"?

 

[ChrisR]

It isn't the motor in the motorised valve if the pump and boiler are working.
Guessing a bit here:
Most likely is lack of water - try bleeding air out near upper pipe which goes into HW cylinder. Usually there's something to undo.
Then check there's water in the header tank in the loft.
Does the CH work?
Meanwhile look for an electric immersion heater in the cylinder - at the top with a thick wire coming from it.

 

[RigidRaider]

ChrisR our problem was that the "character" who built and plumbed our house had done it with two separate heating circuits for upstairs and downstairs each controlled by a separate controller - the upper one for downstairs and the lower one for upstairs! Yeah, right. The upstairs controller was just on/off as he used to run the heating for half an hour before the family went to bed. The HW cylinder is plumbed into the downstairs circuit. We ditched these and fitted a single timer controller for both circuits so when we had no heating downstairs and no HW we found it was the motorised valve for the downstairs circuit that was jamming, although the boiler was still firing and the pump running to feed upstairs. Good, eh?