Boilermate Hot water or Central Heating but not both

[kristoff]

Our new house came with a Boilermate heatsource system driven by a Potterton Profile boiler. I believe the whole system is 20 years old.

With the central heating on there is absolutely no hot water at the taps. Switch heating off and after an hour to ninety minutes there is piping hot water. Turn heating back on and the rads heat up immediately but all hot water to taps has gone.

Checking for anything that could be cured with a large mallet I found the bottom (blue) of the two pumps is extremely hot, but isn't vibrating like the upper (red) one.

I suspect the pump to be faulty and believe this unit is used to return CH system water to the heat source.

Also the metal casing of this pump is mad hot, yet the feed pipe and exit pipe are cool.

Does anyone have any experience of these systems? Could my 'find' actually be a plausible reason for not having CH and hot water at the same time

Thanks

 

[Andygasman2010]

What model boilermate is it? Have you just made "heatsource" up? as i don't recall it.

Sounds like you have a faulty pump. If you have a red one that'll be original, if you also have a blue one I would guess BG have been maintaining it at some point

 

[kristoff]

Sorry Heatstore. It just has "Boilermate" on the cylinder, no "II" label visible.

I have found a date of installation sticker stating 1991.

You are right, the blue pump does have a BG label and is dated 2006.

Thanks

 

[45yearsagasman]

That lower pump is called a sump pump and its purpose is to stir up the water in the store to maintain even top to bottom water temps.If it has failed then the store will not reach required temp as it will shut the boiler down prematurely.The boilers thermostat must be set to Maximum.

 

[kristoff]

Thanks for both replies - very much appreciated.

Will a Grundfos 15-50 replace the British Gas Multihead III

 

[45yearsagasman]

Yes it will and set the pump speed to No1.