Ideal Classic boiler problem

[brittas2019]

Hi, I'd be really grateful of some advice with regards a problem with my boiler. I have an Ideal Classic FF260 and whilst it's a bit old, seems to work reasonably well. We've noticed in the past couple of weeks though that hot water heats up really quickly - it used to take a good hour or so but now the cylinder stat is turning off the boiler in about 30mins and the water is properly hot! When the heating is on the rads are also pretty hot. I've heard some odd whooshing noises a few times so have checked the expansion tank but haven't noticed it dumping hot water from the vent.

I've have turned down the temp on the boiler, expecting it to immediately switch off the burner but it doesn't seem to switch it until you turn it right down to one.

With the boiler running on its normal setting, which is right up to about five, it does still cut out the burner periodically so I had sort of assumed that the thermostat was working but I don't know if these can just become temperamental or will always completely fail? I'm not a heating engineer and have no intention of touching it, but before getting in an engineer I'd like to if possible understand a bit more about what the fault could be ....any ideas would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks Brittas

 

[BoutTime]

Hi. Did you ever find out what the problem was with this?

 

[brittas2019]

I did. After some more research on other forums the PCB got mentioned and the issue was that the relay contacts were getting sticky. I looked at mine and they were quite grubby - I did consider replacing just the relays but just did a board replacement - it’s not inside the combustion area so I just did it myself and it was dead easy to do. Since doing it the problem has not reoccured. Hope this helps!

 

[BoutTime]

Many thanks!!

 

[BoutTime]

Just updating this with the fix for my own Ideal Classic FF260.....

I had the issue where my boiler was literally boiling the water in the system, causing it to pump over into my header tank. Radiators were far too hot. This was made much worse recently after fitting Tado Smart TRVs which when closed, provided less radiators to dissipate the excess heat. I'd noticed that the boiler thermostat knob on the front of the boiler didn't seem to do anything, so the water feed temp was not being regulated. It was intermittent but most of the time didn't work at all.

So I figured it was either the Potentiometer, The PCB, the relay, or the thermistor sensor. After considering a new boiler as ours is 23 years old I figured I had nothing to lose by buying a can of contact cleaner and giving it a whirl.

After isolating the power I lowered the control box to get access to the PCB and potentiometer, and removed the boiler case to get access to the thermistor.

I sprayed contact cleaner into the potentiometer whilst turning the knob continuously, also cleaning the connections. This immediately made the operation of the knob much smoother. I removed the connection on the PCB and cleaned the connector and pins. I did the same with the overheat stat connector too.

I removed the screw securing the thermistor sensor in the combustion chamber case, removed the rubber tip, and gave that a clean before re-inserting the tip then the sensor and fastening the scree. I also cleaned the overheat stat.

After putting everything back together and restoring power the boiler fired up. But this time the thermostat knob (potentiometer) functioned perfectly and turned the boiler off when moving the knob anti-clockwise.

4 days later and the boiler is still regulating the water flow temperature according to the boiler thermostat position by turning on and off as required to maintain the selected temperature. No more noise, no more pumping over. Lower gas consumption. This is after 7 years of trying to figure out WTF was going on.

 

[desktop987456]

Great, for me moral of the story is regular maintenance of heating equipment.