Ferroli filling loop won't work

[henry1]

I emptied all the water from the radiators and afterwards the boiler gave me a low pressure error. I opened the filling loop to fill up the radiators again but nothing happened. Mains water was on, water was going through the boiler (opened hot water tap) but it seemed no water at all went through the filling loop.

There is a similar thread here:
//www.diynot.com/forums/plumbing/dreaded-ferroli-optimax-he-31c-wont-fill-with-water.390826/


But in my model, there are black knobs to open and close the filling loop, rather than the levers. The knobs seem to work, although there are lots and lots of turns.

Any idea what's wrong? The loop itself is a short copper pipe.

 

[JBPHS]

Small world, I came across this today too. New valve is approx £27 plus VAT plus delivery. Cheaper to install an external filling loop. Guess what I did?

James.

 

[mcmoby69]

plastic knobs may have stripped on the metal spindles, usually caused by turning wrong way or over use. might need a spanner on them.

they do need a lot of turns to start filling.

 

[henry1]

It got fixed by itself in the end.
I left the filling loop slightly opened, went to bed and was woken up at 1 am by the mother in law telling me that the pipe was leaking. It turns out that the boiler had filling the central heating system to a pressure of around 3 bars.

So either it takes several hours to fill the system, which I don't recall it taking so long, or there was a blockage (air?) somewhere which got dislodged by the higher mains water pressure at night.

 

[Agile]

Most likely there is a blockage or the valves were not opening fully.

Best of course to have it properly repaired.

But cheaper and more reliable to fit an external filling loop.

Boiler makers think that including a filling loop in the boiler saves the engineer time.

The reality is that they cause more problems than they solve! None of them work reliably over a period of time. Most have poor quality components and Vaillant and Worcester are both some of the worst in this respect.

Tony

 

[henry1]

Must have been a blockage as I left the valves not fully opened and the heating system filled up.