IDEAL LOGIC 15. Won't call for heat. Leakage problems..Any ideas?

Had this boiler fitted by WarmFront around 4 years ago and it persistently plays up. It's been serviced but not in last 15 months.
Latest problem is it fails to call for heat. We've also had issues with the timer, whereby it won't bring on the central heating when it's due but instead heats the water and conversley when central heating off the radiators still come on and it doesn't heat the water!
I can live with all that but not why it simply refuses to call for heat. All stats are ok including tank stat. Pumps were changed within 2 years as that failed. Valves ok.
Water drips from under boiler. Cleaned the sump thingy out and checked soakaway. All seemed fine. Now dripping starts and I release the water from the 21.5 mm outlet and leave the other open..So why is it behaving like there's a backlog somewhere..And shutting itself down? I restart it and turn off at mains..Sometimes works, sometimes not! I hate this boiler with gusto..All it does is whir away with it's noisy exhaust fan and precious little else!!!!

What does the front panel show?

How have you checked that the thermostats are OK?

By the way the boiler doesn't call for heat - it responds (or should respond) to a call for heat!

Sounds to me that you have been opening up the boiler in a way that only a gas registered person should be doing!

Tony

No, don't worry about that. I haven't personally opened the boiler myself. Undoing the bung at bottom of boiler does not require that. Checking soak away pipe system etc.
The cleaning out of the sump was done by a qualified Gas Safe engineer but this hasn't permanently resolved the probs. (How often should that be done?)
I have followed through the trouble shooting to date and unless there's some double fault along the way, none of us can fathom it! (Incidentally, we've paid for so called heating experts to check it through but with no permanent solution, hence trying to find out if it could be an inherent fault in the system.
Malc (Gas Safe neighbour) changed the tank stat, checked, swapped and then swapped back the Honeywell 3-way valve. The timer seems to be playing up as I said earlier. Had an electrician check that there were only two wires to boiler i.e on/off only and no other complexities. Checked the room stat in hall triggers signal to boiler etc.
The only thing that has thrown some light on it all, is whether there is rain water getting in. (The flu is sited on the entry (side) wall close to building front at approx. 6/7ft from ground)
However, I am now stuck until my engineer is back off hols. Considering joining the Warmserve initiative now but I just feel that we shouldn't be experiencing so many issues on such a new but overly complicated system. Warm front were unable to instal a Combi boiler as funds were very limited. A Combi would have eliminated the tank etc and simplified it all a lot more!
Finally, again the boiler responded last night and did heat the water for half an hour but failed again this morning! Talk about the 'Friday machine'!
I much preferred our cranky 18 year old Potteron boiler but I'm sure was highly condemnable as I had to force it's pilot light to work each morning..

newboy said:

What does the front panel show?

How have you checked that the thermostats are OK?

By the way the boiler doesn't call for heat - it responds (or should respond) to a call for heat!

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Hi thanks for clarifying that. It makes more sense.
The front panel shows 1 then 5 then 0. No other error code.
When the boiler is in a 'good mood' and responds to a call for heat, it shows a lovely 'C' and the blue burner light comes on..How I yearn to see that darned light appear!
Tank thermostat was faulty and the new one is fine. But what baffles me is how can the timer say 'off' for Central Heating and then the radiators come on. Or if the CH is due to come on the water doesn't heat up when CH is highlighted on the timer. The electrician felt that the timer may be faulty but hasn't checked it as it's not his area of expertise.
When the 3 way valve was changed (By heating engineer) Could that have been wired incorrectly..Is that possible? As I understand, the valve has a head on it that can be changed independently of the physical valve. But valve was working as far as I know from feeling the temperature of pipes connecting to/bypassing tank.

Some of these suffer from hairline cracks in the flue manifold(plastic).

You said....."Cleaned the sump thingy out and checked soakaway. All seemed fine. Now dripping starts and I release the water from the 21.5 mm outlet and leave the other open.."
Does the boiler work for a while after you do this, although I dont know what you mean by 'leave the other open' if so I'd suspect the condense pipe is blocked.

The sump cover gasket should be replaced on every service. So we've been told by Ideal, funny that when they're having so much trouble with 'their' sump cover??!!!

The condensate trap is syphonic, so must discharge into open air

It's a great wee boiler if not fitted by some rsole cowboy.

Yet another forum name, Dickie?

Agile said:

Yet another forum name, Dickie?

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Always not quite under the radar Tony!

So what did you do to get banned yet again?

Just realised Agile looks like a cross between a svelte Roy 'Chubby' Brown and Professor Richard Dawkins.

jaycart said:

Just realised Agile looks like a cross between a svelte Roy 'Chubby' Brown and Professor Richard Dawkins.

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Pfffffftttttt!! While admittedly T is no oil painting, take a butchers at your own coupon fella!!!!

I had the great misfortune to change a fan on a Worcester Tupperware Bosch Greenstar Junior the other day & noticed there's a similar syphonic condensate trap in that shed also!
(Written without prejudice disclaimer).......

Agile said:

So what did you do to get banned yet again?

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Not too sure why Tony, but hey, there's no such thing as bad publicity when you're planning world domination......

twgas said:

You said....."Cleaned the sump thingy out and checked soakaway. All seemed fine. Now dripping starts and I release the water from the 21.5 mm outlet and leave the other open.."
Does the boiler work for a while after you do this, although I dont know what you mean by 'leave the other open' if so I'd suspect the condense pipe is blocked.

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Hi thanks for your reply. Checked the whole soakaway pipe system and not blocked. The condensate tank was full. emptied that but the syphon just doesn't seem to work and discharge into the soakaway pipe. Instead it builds up and there is a connection in the soakaway's piping that can be separated to allow it to be left open with a container under it to see if the condensed water actually enters the piping..Which it didn't, so we had to manually empty it. Once the chamber was empty of water the dripping stopped. So that's that bit controlled for now. The other issue we suspect is to do with the midway valve or wiring or both! Electrician coming tomorrow as heating engineer couldn't fathom it either. Midway valve 'seems' to be functioning ok, so that just leaves wiring or programmer as last shot. The system was fitted by Warmfront when they existed.