Our boiler sounds like a Spitfire, any advice appreciated!

[Ollie2014]

Hello there everyone,

We are a group of students living in a privately rented house. We have just begun to use our central heating for the first time, but we have found that when the boiler comes on for the central heating it often begins to make an awful racket, sounding much like a loud plane passing through our house. Buzzing, whirring and whining away, this dies away and then repeats on loop after about 20 seconds. We have turned the radiator water temperature dial down, but it still often makes similar sounds, just slightly more toned down, but often will actually be more continuous rather than dying away and then looping back again. Sometimes these sounds will subside after some minutes, other times the sounds keep on going until one of us goes and turns the radiator water temperature dial down yet further.

The pressure dial looks ok with it never reaching within 1 bar of the red zone even when the central heating is on.

I have attached a link to a youtube video of me turning the dial up to the higher level of radiator water temperature to give you an idea of what we're experiencing, sorry for the poor picture quality it is very dark where the boiler is kept upstairs. (It is an 8 bedroom three storey house.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7WPUA2KIHE

Any suggestion on what might be wrong and what to tell the landlord would be appreciated, it would also be good to know whether this is indicative of anything dangerous.

Thank you all greatly,

Best wishes,

Ollie

 

[Dan Robinson]

Make and model will help.

Link to video doesn't work.

You get an E for this assignment.

 

[Ollie2014]

My apologies, I have hopefully now rectified the link problem, it should work correctly now.

The boiler make is Baxi but I am afraid the model number doesn't seem to be very apparent. I can not locate any text on the boiler at all sadly.

 

[Agile]

Its a Baxi Combi 80/105 or Performa type boiler.

By chance I went to a Biasi M90 doing a similar thing today. Its what I refer to as a diving Spitfire!

Its a problem with the main heat exchanger which I will be sorting out with sulphonic acid but not really a DIY job. But its really up to the Landlord's engineer to do his own diagnosis and treatment.

It was a tenanted property but owned by a very neat Italian lady who wears very small underwear.

Here is the real thing:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drUEKjmtQ9Q

 

[Dan Robinson]

We get the real deal practising over our house a couple of times a year.

Really does send shivers down your spine.

I hope today's students appreciate it as much.

 

[Agile]

The boiler make is Baxi but I am afraid the model number doesn't seem to be very apparent. I can not locate any text on the boiler at all sadly.

Being a student and therefore practiced in finding answers I am surprised that you did not look on your copy of the Gas Safety Certificate!

This evening I went to a tenanted house where the son reminded me of Dan! The son was called Issa, which is Arabic for Jesus. But he was neither Christian nor Jewish.

 

[Ollie2014]

Excellent well thank you very much for giving some ideas there Agile! The landlord / property manager are very good at ignoring issues until we actually tell them that knowledgeable persons in the relevant field have also suspected there must be an issue!

Alas, our landlord is not particularly scrupulous, you can be sure that if such certificate was given to us, it would have been checked. And alas neither is he a beautiful Italian lady, if he does wear small underwear, I would never want to find it out! Thankfully we are making progress with challenging them over a number of major issues regarding the property, but it is unbelievable the lengths you can have to go to in order to put enough pressure on some landlords to take responsibility for merely maintaining a property to a livable standard!

Young people appreciate the world around them and its past in much greater depth than I think people realise, so have no fear, the Spitfire shall always be revered! Particularly by myself as I am studying history.

At the risk of sounding as though I am just fabricating things - the designer of the original Spitfire, Reginald Mitchell, was my great grandfather's cousin.

Thank you very much for your help Agile and all the best to those on the forum,

Oliver

 

[FiremanT]

You ma wish to peruse this-

http://www.hse.gov.uk/gas/landlords/gassaferecord.htm
and
http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg285.pdf
and
http://www.gassaferegister.co.uk/advice/renting_a_property/for_landlords.aspx

Pass it all to your agent, Landlord and all your uni friends

 

[Dan Robinson]

Does your college have anything to do with the landlord? some of the landlords I deal with have some pretty stringent requirements placed upon them by some establishments.

 

[Agile]

A copy of the Certificate has by law to be given to the tenants.

Although I suspect that as students are expected to be pretty irresponsible then perhaps some agents/landlords may not bother!

Tony

 

[D_Hailsham]

The son was called Issa, which is Arabic for Jesus. But he was neither Christian nor Jewish.

Why does that surprise you? Jesus is considered a "Messenger of God" by Moslems.

 

[Ollie2014]

Thanks kindly for those extremely useful links FiremanT, that is much appreciated and I shall distribute them.

Thanks for the input Dan, sadly the property and landlord do not have any formal ties with my university, but the university does however offer advice and support against uncooperative landlords, so we have begun to liaise with them on matters too.

Yes thanks for the info Tony, it would seem most landlords believe that students are too young to have the confidence and/or knowledge to pursue issues they simply ignore. But as they are already beginning to see, we know where we stand and are not shy to stand up for ourselves. We have today had an environmental health officer around who is now hot on the case of them over other major issues with the property, and shall now be serving them with a period of time in which they must legally rectify these issues.

Thank you all for your help,
Best wishes,

Oliver