Keston Boiler faults, issues and problems, advice please

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I have a Keston C55 it has been nothing but trouble for the last 2 years. We cannot have the central heating and hot water on at the same time, as the priority always goes to the hot water and not the underfloor heating, so we have to have them on a different times for either of them to work properly. We also have constant issues with all sorts of strange codes which appear on the boiler's read out panel. Most of the codes don't even appear in their manual so we have no idea what the boiler is doing most of the time. We often have C74 flashing on and off, D51 and other random codes. It often comes up with error codes that are in the book, the usual E codes, when the boiler is reset it settles down.

Our most recent issue is that it decides some days to turn the hot water on and on other days it just doesn't bother. There is no pattern to it, some times it happens in the morning, so we have cold showers, nice! On other occasions it doesn't come on in the evening, it follows no pattern and is entirely random. We have so far had 5 different time switches fitted as our electrician thought it was something to do with them, but the most recent clock is still making no difference.

We also use a huge amount of gas, as the boiler seems to keep 'ramping' itself up and down all the time. We have a 5 bed house, with 3 bathrooms, underfloor heating and there are three of us in the house, we use around £450 of gas every quarter - apart from the summer which is still about £300 a quarter.

Any one got any ideas what C74 means and D51? And what the issue is with not being able to have the hot water and central heating on at the same time. And why we have the random issue with the hot water not coming on.

This boiler really is a total piece of junk! It was expensive and was fitted because we needed to put it a basement with the flue being well above ground level, and our Plumber thought this was the only boiler that would work in that situation - so we are stuck with it.

Thanks Ruth.
 
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lot of issues ruth so ill just mention a couple
keston have a devided following, id say about 80/90% dead, imean DEAD against.couple of months ago i put up a post similar to yours and one alternative suggested was a floor standing worcester boiler, perhaps this may be an alternative to persue quotes for
my mate, an installer, has an vaillant ecotec pro 28 boiler in a mid terrace that he runs 24/7. his last quarter gas bill was over £700, and hes not the only person to mention figures like that to me.its very difficult to make comparisons though. perhaps your gas bill would be higher with a more reliable boiler. who knows?
youll have to wait for more answers but you need a helpful installer.i dont know your last one but i wouldnt have a keston for nought, that last one i saw was my first i looked at .not good but your choices are limited unless you reposition your boiler. good luck with it
 
Always better to have a boiler engineer than a plumber! He can deal with boiler and electrical issues himself!

Hot water priority is a good thing and properly set up it will reheat in 20-30 minutes. It sounds as if yours is not set up properly.

An electrician who fits five time devices seems to be totally out of his depth!

Your gas bill seems pretty cheap to me for a five bedroom house! A three bed semi costs about £1400pa now! You seem totally out of touch with fuel costs.

Or are you one of those people for whom any bill is too much? That might explain why you seem to have engaged a plumber and an electrician who dont know what they are doing perhaps just because they are cheap. Expertise costs money!

Tony
 
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The plumber who installed the system is Gas Safe Registered and came with full references. The system that was installed also works with solar panels, and whole house heat recovery. The house is a new build, A rated for EPC, which had a projected fuel cost for an entire year of £600 - given that is super thermally efficient and virtually air tight, when the SAP test was carried out, hence my query over the cost of the bills. We paid around £30K for the plumbing system in the house, with the heat recovery, solar panels, boiler etc, so we did not try to cut corners. Our Electrician also came with excellent references. Both the Electrician and Plumber have also fitted a Worcester boiler for us in another property and the system works perfectly. The Electrician has been very honest with us and said he feels the system which is also controlled by Uponor weather compensating is ridiculously complicated and that he thinks the boiler is unreliable.

We tried really hard to install a high quality system and as this was a new build we were also virtually told by Building Control what we had to install, as the Code for Sustainable homes, now requires new builds to have all sorts of so called environmentally features, such as solar panels, etc to be installed, in order to meet SAP testing, and the Code itself.

Any ideas on the codes or the issues with the hot water?

Thanks Ruth.
 
With that additional information I would agree that the gas bill does sound very high.

However, you have not explained why the "plumber" is not dealing with the controls and wiring aspects as any good heating engineer would?

Also you have not explained why with such a well insulated house the boiler has been so seriously oversized! That will greately contribute to the high gas comsumption and result in on/off cycling which will contribute to boiler problems! It will also be the sounce of your complaint that the boiler is constantly ramping up.

Perhaps your "plumber" adds together the heat loss of the house ( 8 kW ? ) to the maximum absorbtion of the hot water cylinder? ( Whereas the standard is to add just 2 kW to give a boiler power of just 10 kW for which a 12 kW boiler would be fitted! )

I am not impressed by a "plumber" that fits a grossly oversized boiler and cannot wire up or fault find on heating controls!

Tony
 
ruth i have looked in two manuals, tried google and cannot find fault codes like yours. they are either e codes for error or b codes for blocking.you need to phone keston or ideal boilers
 
The biggest and first error they made with this boiler was spelling the mistake on the front cover of the manual.

Keston is actually spelt

S H I T.

Any engineer selling one of these as a "quality" system should have their fingers removed with a rusty spoon and then firmly inserted up the darker of their orifices.

I could be wrong, but C and D codes are the central heating temps and hot water temps respectively as this boiler does have dual inputs - hence wired correctly it knows if it is doing heating or hot water.

Probably the ONLY decent feature of the boiler.

As for being the only option. Atag, Atmos, Viessmann all have options that in a new build meant there was no excuse for fitting a Keston - sorry - S H I T.


It is also as Tony says - VERY oversized. Even if your house wasn't SAP level 300, or whatever they've gotten up to now. With Solar and/or hot water priority 30kW would probably be more than enough. Hell I have a 5 bed detached 1920's house in Cricklewood running happily on a sub 30Kw (24kW I think) System boiler with hot water priority.

It is about as well insulated as a Kit Kat in a microwave.
 
I suspect a certain amount of User error here!

The system is hot Water priority for good reason, when in HW demand, the boiler should ramp up to 80'c to heat the hot water cylinder quickly, it will then revert back to CH Mode, the boiler flow temperature will reduce to 50-60'c to supply the UFH - in doing this the boiler will condense the flue gasses, increasing the combustion efficiency of the boiler and saving fuel overall

HOWEVER for this to happen the 2 boiler thermostats have to be set to 80'c and 50-60'c respectively ;)
 
Problem being 1st stat is normally used for CH (85c) , with 2nd stat being used for HW (65c) , not all installers use your logic boilerman. ;)
 
Well, I also have a Keston C55 for a 5 BR house and, funny enough, "it was expensive and was fitted because we needed to put it in a basement with the flue being well above ground level, and our Plumber thought this was the only boiler that would work in that situation".

Now, after 3 years, we had our first issue with a B26 message caused by dirt blocking the water pressure sensor. The gas engineer cleaned it but it stopped again right after he left, showing an E14 error. After a reset it restarted. We will see how long it holds (it was a few hours ago, so far so good)

So, 2 questions if anyone can help:
-what is E14? It doesn't appear in the manual or anywhere online
-I understand that it is a very capricious boiler and that problems may start to accumulate soon. Are there good quality alternatives that could accommodate 9 meters of flue (5 meter horizontal and 4 meters vertical)?

Thanks!


Read more: //www.diynot.com/diy/threads/k...-problems-advice-please.361491/#ixzz3yg8CT6yY
 
keston c55 is a big boiler with a fair bit of electronic controls/sensors.
your average joe plumber/electrician who comes highly recommended is unlikely to be able to design a heating system that will cope with the output of the boiler.
once a upon a time the boiler was told what to do by roomstats, zone valves etc etc, nowadays the boiler has its own brain, if the system and the boiler do not work together, the boiler throws a fault code up. nine times out of ten its usually a system fault , not a boiler fault! (it is usually protecting itself)

there is more science to installing a boiler than throwing a white box on the wall.
 

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