Hi everyone this is my first post here and was hoping someone might be able to help me.
I have an Ideal isar he30 combi boiler which is no longer working. The boiler is 7 years old and up until December 2011 we had no problems with it, which im aware is a rarity. Last December the boiler would intermittently display fault code FL and we would lose the heating and hot water, once it had been reset it would usually come back on. At the same time my gas rings on my cooker seemed to be going out every now and then. At the time i just presumed that it was my bad luck that both my boiler and cooker were packing up at the same time.
In February of this year the boiler stopped working completely and pressing the reset button had no effect. 2 days later my cooker also stopped working. I rung British Gas to see if there was possibly a problem with the gas supply and they sent someone out to look at the gas supply. It was discovered that we gas a large amount of water in the mains gas pipe. We had this drained and both the boiler and cooker started working although only temporarily. We had a Nat Grid engineer out to drain the gas mains a further 3 times over the next 3 says before they decided the mains pipe needed replacing due to a leak in it, presumably this was how the gas was getting out and the water getting in. After the work was finished the boiler and cooker would still play up so i called a plumber out thinking it was just a boiler issue after all.
The plumber said water had entered my boiler via the gas mains, and the same with the gas cooker rings and had damaged the heat exchange. He charged me £200 to take the heat exchange out and pour some pink liquid in it to clean it. He said he was clearing the dirt out of it that had come in through the gas pipe. The boiler then worked fine for just over a month until it started displaying the FL code again. The same plumber came out and said the heat exchange was damaged beyond repair and that the gas valve had also gone due to being corroded by the water in the boiler.
I have an ongoing complaint with Nat Grid regarding the damage to the boiler and have been told that after 5 months with no heating and hot water, that they will compensate me for either the cost of repairing the boiler or a new boiler depending on whether the boiler is economically viable to be repaired, providing my plumber will categorically state the damage to the boiler has been caused by the water in the gas mains. The plumber says he believes this is the case but because he can not be 100% sure he wont put it in writing, he states that even though he knows no one has purposely damaged the boiler there is a very remote possibility that i have taken my boiler apart and filled it with water????? therefore causing the damage.
What i wanted to know on here is, firstly is it possible for water in the gas mains to enter my boiler, secondly if it was to enter the boiler what parts of the boiler are likely to be damaged and thirdly how do i prove this.
Sorry for the long post but thought id put everything relevant to help describe the problem and thank you in advance for any helpful replies.
I have an Ideal isar he30 combi boiler which is no longer working. The boiler is 7 years old and up until December 2011 we had no problems with it, which im aware is a rarity. Last December the boiler would intermittently display fault code FL and we would lose the heating and hot water, once it had been reset it would usually come back on. At the same time my gas rings on my cooker seemed to be going out every now and then. At the time i just presumed that it was my bad luck that both my boiler and cooker were packing up at the same time.
In February of this year the boiler stopped working completely and pressing the reset button had no effect. 2 days later my cooker also stopped working. I rung British Gas to see if there was possibly a problem with the gas supply and they sent someone out to look at the gas supply. It was discovered that we gas a large amount of water in the mains gas pipe. We had this drained and both the boiler and cooker started working although only temporarily. We had a Nat Grid engineer out to drain the gas mains a further 3 times over the next 3 says before they decided the mains pipe needed replacing due to a leak in it, presumably this was how the gas was getting out and the water getting in. After the work was finished the boiler and cooker would still play up so i called a plumber out thinking it was just a boiler issue after all.
The plumber said water had entered my boiler via the gas mains, and the same with the gas cooker rings and had damaged the heat exchange. He charged me £200 to take the heat exchange out and pour some pink liquid in it to clean it. He said he was clearing the dirt out of it that had come in through the gas pipe. The boiler then worked fine for just over a month until it started displaying the FL code again. The same plumber came out and said the heat exchange was damaged beyond repair and that the gas valve had also gone due to being corroded by the water in the boiler.
I have an ongoing complaint with Nat Grid regarding the damage to the boiler and have been told that after 5 months with no heating and hot water, that they will compensate me for either the cost of repairing the boiler or a new boiler depending on whether the boiler is economically viable to be repaired, providing my plumber will categorically state the damage to the boiler has been caused by the water in the gas mains. The plumber says he believes this is the case but because he can not be 100% sure he wont put it in writing, he states that even though he knows no one has purposely damaged the boiler there is a very remote possibility that i have taken my boiler apart and filled it with water????? therefore causing the damage.
What i wanted to know on here is, firstly is it possible for water in the gas mains to enter my boiler, secondly if it was to enter the boiler what parts of the boiler are likely to be damaged and thirdly how do i prove this.
Sorry for the long post but thought id put everything relevant to help describe the problem and thank you in advance for any helpful replies.