Central Heating Not Working

[Cardinal Fang]

Impeccable timing (breaks down on the coldest New Year's Eve for ages), but wonder if anyone can tell me if I'm more likely to need to call a heating engineer or an electrician tomorrow.

1. Make/Model- Worcester-Bosch Danesmoor 15/19 oil boiler, model version AYP (about 3 years old)

2. Wouldn't come on yesterday. Have 2/3 tank of oil, the manual start button is lit up and it does seem to fire up, but then switches itself off after less than a minute. On one occasion yesterday, it did fire for a good 10 minutes, and the flue got hot, but the rads stayed cold. Since then- nothing. Fires for 30-40 secs, clicks and turns off. The manual start button remains on.

3. Nothing has been changed recently, but after the problem, we noticed that the shower (which is I think on a separate electrical circuit) wasn't working, and hasn't worked since (on-off pull has no effect). Also, the fuse on the consumer unit (the ring circuit) kept blowing last night (It's an old style bridged fuse). Only had a bit of fuse wire, and I think it was 15 amp anyway, but got some 30 amp fuse wire today (3 cheers for the corner shop!), and seems OK, though we are going easy on what we are turning on on the ring circuit. As we had 4 convector heaters on yesterday after the cent heating stopped, as well as the usual things on a ring socket, I suspect this may have been the cause of the fuse blowing, and the repeated blowing was due to my using 15 amp, which at least kept the ring socket going for a couple of hours at a time.

4. Problem started yesterday about 2pm. Up to then, been working fine.

So, I'm just wondering whether I've got an electrical problem (given the shower not working) and need to call a sparks, or whether the problem is one emanating from the boiler, and the shower issue is a consequence.

Sorry so long winded, but wonder if anyone can point me in right direction.

Cheers and Happy New Year.

 

[matt1e]

hi your going to need a heating engineer
your shower problem is more than likely unrelated to the heating problem so you also have an electrical problem which your heating engineer MAY look at for you while he's there you can always ask him

you are also correct on the 15amp/4 heaters issue

matt

 

[sparkiedave]

might be worth checking if the pump is running, sounds like you have power to the boiler if the manual start button is lit, a boiler will usually run for a short while with a faulty pump then cut out due to overheating, try checking the flow & return pipe temps as the boiler starts, if the flow gets hot close to the boiler but no further then the pump isn't working, sounds like you have a couple of electrical issues to sort out too though

 

[casius66]

Have you checked your oil filter at the tank? Could be full of carp, sounds like an oil supply problem on 1st read.
Agree with Matt1e on the shower problem.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

Thanks for taking the time and trouble to reply; really appreciate the advice.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

Just a diagnostic update; boiler problem was a bit of sludge in the filter which then froze and blocked the tank combined with some water having got into the pipe and also frozen. CH engineer rectified by removing the filter and boiling water on the pipe.

Elec problem was just the ring circuit blowing because of too many convector heaters on it, and only having 15 amp fuse wire.

Thanks again all.