Do new boilers have design faults?
- Thread starter Mike2007
- Start date
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The designs of too many items, not just boilers, are compromised by the conflict between cost of manufacture and the perceivable risks of malfunction.
That PCB is £300 to you and £50(?) to Viessman. That said, I do not believe that they intentionally build in design faults for the sake of selling more spares. Not even Apple do that (but they do have a history of refusing in warranty repairs even though they know components are faulty).
If they made things 100% reliable and cheaply repairable, then they would go out of business. They have to fail and need parts or replacements, for a manufacturer to continue to manufacture and stay in profit. Lots of things are designed to have a limited working life, I have been known to diagnose early causes of failures and redesign to improve and extend the reliable life.
Our current washing machine must be around 12 years old now. It first failed a weeks outside the guarantee period, due to a fault on it's controlling PCB. I investigated, found it was due to a 10p capacitor, which had failed due to heat from the two adjacent heat sinks it was mounted between. Cap replaced with one with a more robust temperature rating and it has been fine ever since.
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I have a Dyson washing machine purchased in 2002. Still does a perfectly good wash. Built to last but expensive to buy so the market was limited.
There can be obvious failings at the design stage, failings to adequately test a design, then simple mistakes in specification to account for all likely operating conditions, which can bite much further down the line.
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Exactly
Engineers involved in the design of a new telephone switchboard were required to be the lunch time telephone operator for a few days. They learnt far more about what the operators were doing than they would have done by just talking to the operators
The problem with wall mounted gas boilers is that the controls have to be accessible, so this means they are fitted at the bottom of the boiler and thus under the water works. Floor standing boilers are able to have the electronics above the waterworks, except for certain oil combi boiler manufacturers who persist positioning two circulating pumps beneath the 4 DHW heat exchanger connections which invariably leak after a couple of years.
It's the same with clothes and dish washing machines too, all the control electronics down below, but all the ones I have come across have had a protective water shield over the top to deflect any water.
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