My boiler makes a really really loud vibration (like a trombone) when the flame is heating. it is not like kettling or knocking, it is a faster vibration like a 2nd WW bomber.
It starts the noise when dhw is flowing through at half flow (tap only opened a little) and when the water temperature of the boiler is set low. Changing the water temperature output to high or opening the tap to max stops the vibration.
It recently started vibrating also in central heating mode. Here vibration occurs at 55-60 degrees. Lower temperatures are OK and 65-70 it seems to stop also (although see below).
I had a couple of engineers round to have a look through. One said that it might be limescale in the main heat exchanger and that it needed replacing. At the time of his visit the vibration only occured in dhw mode, not in ch mode.
I called for a second opinion, and this guy swore it wasn't limescale and was probably due to make of boiler (it is a heatline solaris pc30 boiler) but could not suggest what the problem was for sure, maybe loose fan housing or something twisted.
I read through the manual and fiddled with some settings:
The boiler range had been set to minimum even though factory preset should have been about 80%, so I adjusted this back to 80%. This reduced the vibration significantly.
I also adjusted the max fan speed up to 90%. This almost entirely solved the vibration. It now only vibrated in dhw mode when the water temperature is set to low.
I have yet to see whether the problem starts up in its favourite time which was at 5am when the heating was firing up for the day (oh yes).
Any ideas as to what the problem is - is it limescale? what can I do to solve it? If someone can give me an idea then at least I will be able to tell if the next engineer who comes round knows what they're talking about.
It starts the noise when dhw is flowing through at half flow (tap only opened a little) and when the water temperature of the boiler is set low. Changing the water temperature output to high or opening the tap to max stops the vibration.
It recently started vibrating also in central heating mode. Here vibration occurs at 55-60 degrees. Lower temperatures are OK and 65-70 it seems to stop also (although see below).
I had a couple of engineers round to have a look through. One said that it might be limescale in the main heat exchanger and that it needed replacing. At the time of his visit the vibration only occured in dhw mode, not in ch mode.
I called for a second opinion, and this guy swore it wasn't limescale and was probably due to make of boiler (it is a heatline solaris pc30 boiler) but could not suggest what the problem was for sure, maybe loose fan housing or something twisted.
I read through the manual and fiddled with some settings:
The boiler range had been set to minimum even though factory preset should have been about 80%, so I adjusted this back to 80%. This reduced the vibration significantly.
I also adjusted the max fan speed up to 90%. This almost entirely solved the vibration. It now only vibrated in dhw mode when the water temperature is set to low.
I have yet to see whether the problem starts up in its favourite time which was at 5am when the heating was firing up for the day (oh yes).
Any ideas as to what the problem is - is it limescale? what can I do to solve it? If someone can give me an idea then at least I will be able to tell if the next engineer who comes round knows what they're talking about.