Protherm 80E combi boiler driving me insane!

Hi all,

Been renting a place for 14 months now and the Protherm 80E boiler has always been a pain...regularly going to F1 mode, running extremely noisily, whatever. It's latest little game for the last fortnight or so is that when you run any of the hot taps, it will fire up and run for about 30 seconds, then stop, and immediately start again for another 30 secs etc but of course you get a cold bit through each time when it restarts, making your bath a bit rubbish! It only does it on hot water, not on the heating. I treated myself and boiled some kettles today to make my bath a bit hotter than tepid for a nice change!

Any advice?

well if your renting its your landlords duty to get it fixed. It sounds like the Plate heat exchanger is blocked. These boilers are not to bad considering how cheap they were to buy, but needs someone who knows a little about them as it has a few "quirks".

The symptoms you describe are most likely to be a blocked Direct Hot Water Plate to Plate heat exchanger.

When the boiler heats for H.W. it has to get rid of the heat quickly. If it can't it overheats and turns off, but will come back on and try again repeatedly.

I do clean these out as they are expensive, but it doesn't always work by a long shot so parts wise it can be anything up to £130 ish for a new heat exchanger, plus whatever labour, depending on how easy it is to access the heat exchanger. My quickest is about 40 min, my slowest....well I don't like to tell, but closer to 2 hours.

If you are in rented accom its your landlords problem. Dont accept people 'fiddling' with the boiler and pretending its fixed. It won't be without a new Heat Exchanger.

Moving on, this could suggest the system water in the boiler is filthy. This also need sorting as if it is it will block a new heat exchanger in no time, and you are back to square one. It may need a powerflush as well as a new heat exchanger..(Hint..make sure the flush is done with the old exchanger in...otherwise you get crudd through the new one...)

Good Luck

Alf

The landlord is a personal friend so there's no worries there, but how soon anything is done is another matter. Getting absurd now- this is nothing I can look at myself then?

You can in theory remove and clean the Plate Hex yourself, but I would say this is "advanced" diy and without any prior experience of working on some kind of hydraulics/boiler/engineering will prob end up in a mess.