No heating or hot water!

[Jenjo]

Hi, I'm really hoping someone can put my mind at rest as I'm at my wits end.

I had no heating so plumber told me system was blocked and needed to be flushed. I have a (terrible) one pipe system so this will involve taking all the rads off one by one. He also said pump was on its last legs.

Anyway, he came back a week later to fit new pump and magna filter thing. He put a chemical into the system to help break down the sludge and booked to come back on 19th to flush system.

Heating was on for three days (well, going half heartedly to half the rads - an old problem that was solved by a gate valve to balance the system). On third day I noticed the rads that did have heat were cooling down. Checked boiler (Worcester 28CDi) and although the heating light was on nothing was happening. Turned on hot water tap on sink and there was a massive bang from the boiler. Turned everything off in a panic and called plumber.

He came out next day and said I needed a new circuit board as mine was dead (couldn't press reset button). Had that fitted but then there was wierd noise from boiler. After much faffing about seemed to be ok. He told me again to leave heating on to let chemical go round system. An hour later same thing happened again. Terrible noise from boiler.

Phoned Brit Gas next day as plumber couldn't make it til today. They basically didn't even want to touch anything as said I needed a whole new system. They did manage to get it going by letting air out of valve on top of boiler and also told me to leave heat on low.

An hour later same thing. Had to switch boiler off.

Plumber out today and says needs to clean heat exchangers and will do that on 19th when flushes system. Til then not really anything that can be done.

So, I'm now left with no heating and no hot water for then next 8 days.

I'm just really worried that flushing/cleaning isn't going to work. Boiler had been fine in terms of hot water. Can't really understand why it has now developed all these problems.

Any thoughts would be really welcome as I have got myself into a really stressed mess!

PS - sorry for really long post!

 

[MarkCharnock]

Putting a new combi on a one pipe system in my opinion is a bad idea in the first place. When the new boiler was fitted was the system power flushed? It sounds like you have alot of air in the system from when it was drained down and that's what the banging is. Is the boiler firing on HW demand at all? If it is and it's over heating it's probably a blocked plate to plate. Also you may need to get another plumber that doesn't leave you without heating and hot water for 8 days

 

[Jenjo]

Putting a new combi on a one pipe system in my opinion is a bad idea in the first place. When the new boiler was fitted was the system power flushed? It sounds like you have alot of air in the system from when it was drained down and that's what the banging is. Is the boiler firing on HW demand at all? If it is and it's over heating it's probably a blocked plate to plate. Also you may need to get another plumber that doesn't leave you without heating and hot water for 8 days

The combi was already here when I moved in (10 years ago) so I have no idea whether it was power flushed then - although, given the state of all the work done on the place by the previous owner, I would think not.

The boiler fires on HW demand but does exactly the same as CH - fires for about 15 secs then the almighty racket and it switches off.

If there was a lot of air in the system from the drain down when the new pump was fitted - would it have worked ok for the three days before then behaving like this?