Hi,
I have had a Boilermate 2 in my flat for over 10 years now. Its connected to a potterton suprima boiler. I have replaced the circuit boards in the boilermate before after the relay started chattering, but when it all started again, I decided I had had enough and decided to upate them with something more reliable and a good bit cheaper.
Of the two circuit boards in side the boilermate, one controls the delay off of the boiler circulator pump, to remove the excess heat from the boiler after switch off. The other board switches on the central heating ciruclator pump for a few seconds every 40 hours so to prevent seizure in the summer.
I have now replaced both with Crouzet timers and this has worked a treat so far. They cost about £30 rather than £70 for the circuit boards. The original boards had a very crude method of dropping the mains voltage to get power to the ICs and this wasted a lot of heat and electricity. About 4 watts continuous.
The Crouzet devices are miles more efficient.
I have also just replaced the rather simplistic thermostatic controller with a new Thermocouple/electronic controller called a N2006Power, bought on ebay for £30. Now I can actually see the tank temperature and decide precisely at what temperature it will switch on and off the boiler. I expect this to save me a lot of money in the future as the tank temp was being held at between 68 and 72 degrees which is too much for summer, and the boiler forever coming on and off. Thats with the dial at the lowest temperature as well.
I also found that with the old tank thermostat at the lowest setting, the boiler would sometimes trip off on temperature achieved at about 80 degrees even though the tank was demanding more heat as it had not achieved the 72 required by the controller (there appears to be about a 10 degree differential on the tank to boiler output, which would be expected.
Anybody else had any experience of upgrading the controls of these boilermates???
cheers
Guy
I have had a Boilermate 2 in my flat for over 10 years now. Its connected to a potterton suprima boiler. I have replaced the circuit boards in the boilermate before after the relay started chattering, but when it all started again, I decided I had had enough and decided to upate them with something more reliable and a good bit cheaper.
Of the two circuit boards in side the boilermate, one controls the delay off of the boiler circulator pump, to remove the excess heat from the boiler after switch off. The other board switches on the central heating ciruclator pump for a few seconds every 40 hours so to prevent seizure in the summer.
I have now replaced both with Crouzet timers and this has worked a treat so far. They cost about £30 rather than £70 for the circuit boards. The original boards had a very crude method of dropping the mains voltage to get power to the ICs and this wasted a lot of heat and electricity. About 4 watts continuous.
The Crouzet devices are miles more efficient.
I have also just replaced the rather simplistic thermostatic controller with a new Thermocouple/electronic controller called a N2006Power, bought on ebay for £30. Now I can actually see the tank temperature and decide precisely at what temperature it will switch on and off the boiler. I expect this to save me a lot of money in the future as the tank temp was being held at between 68 and 72 degrees which is too much for summer, and the boiler forever coming on and off. Thats with the dial at the lowest temperature as well.
I also found that with the old tank thermostat at the lowest setting, the boiler would sometimes trip off on temperature achieved at about 80 degrees even though the tank was demanding more heat as it had not achieved the 72 required by the controller (there appears to be about a 10 degree differential on the tank to boiler output, which would be expected.
Anybody else had any experience of upgrading the controls of these boilermates???
cheers
Guy
