Back boiler help please

tomm88 · 27 Apr 2014

Hi all, I have just bought a house which has a back boiler in the fireplace. The property is electric only with no gas so the purpose of this is tto heat the water.

I have a lit a fire for a good hour but the water remains the same temperature... freezing cold. My first thought is that there is no water in he boiler, that a tap is turned off somewhere.

Can anyone point me in the direction of what to try first? I'm told there is likely to be A tap in the loft near the water tank thatccould fill the boiler up. Is this right? Also should I be lookingat the immers ion heater from anythin?

Any hhelp wouldbe appre ciated. Sorry for awful spellingand grammar... TTrying to write this on a 'smart' phone.

Thanks in advance folks.

kidgreen61 · 27 Apr 2014

have a look in your loft for a small tank, and see if there's any water in it.

stardanny · 27 Apr 2014

Have a look in airing cupboard, is there a 4 pipes connecting to hot water cylinder? One at top, one at bottom and two on other side, bottom and middle?

It may be disused, or has a pinhole leak on boiler.

Daniel.

jeff the gasman · 27 Apr 2014

A coal fired back boiler does not have as manner tank. If you have water coming out of your hot tap the boiler should be full. Assuming of course your boiler is connected to your hot water cylinder.
There should be two large pipes on one side of the cylinder, these are from the back boiler and the top one should get warm when the fire is lit.
You need a good roaring fire and there should be a Damper that will need opening to pull the heat behind the boiler. The damper will be found toward the top of the fire opening and will normally be pulled towards you.
Good luck
Jeff.

tomm88 · 27 Apr 2014

Thanks, I'll be going to the house today to check, we're currently renovating/decorating and should be moving in next week...

Can anybody tell me if we were to light a fire would this be dangerous I've read about them exploding but can't tell if this is when they are connected to gas fires and central heating.

Thanks.

jeff the gasman · 27 Apr 2014

If it's connected to the cylinder and cylinder is full then no problems. If it isn't connected to cylinder it should be drilled to remove dead water.
Jeff

Silvertip · 27 Apr 2014

It's not a back boiler to the rads and a separate immersion heater for hot water, if that's plausible?

tomm88 · 28 Apr 2014

We don't have radiators just storage heaters so the back boiler can only assist with the hot water.

I went into the loft last night and found a smaller tank which is a start.. It was full of water but there was a pipe that looked like it had something over the top of it... However this was out of the water at the very top of the tank so not quite sure what this would do.

I'v aattached a couple of pictures of the tank and the capped pipe. The tap that is seen in the picture is open also.

Any suggestions?

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tomm88 · 28 Apr 2014

Just an update....I have had a fire going this morning and noticed there was a metal plate infront of a hole which I believe is the back boiler in the fire place...I removed this plate out the way (our dampener is broken open) and it seems as though the water started to warm up...one of the pipes going into the immersion was warm too.

The fire did go out after about 20 minutes...as this is something I need to learn to do properly haha. So we didn't get much heat, but it certainly changed temperature.

Does this sound as if it is all working okay? It looked promising to me...

jeff the gasman · 28 Apr 2014

Yeah just get a good fire going and stay with it for an hour.
Good luck in your new home.
Jeff

tomm88 · 28 Apr 2014

Thanks for all the help. It's just good to know how it works a little bit more really. I'm sure over the coming months I will be on this website a fair bit!

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Back boiler help please

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