Loud noisy boiler!

[Cani]

Just helping mother-in-law move in to a 10 year old house. We switch on the boiler to hear loud banging noises coming from the boiler (and I mean earth shattering noises). The boiler fires up, runs okay for about 30 seconds then the banging, vibration noises start and then the flame cuts off only to be restarted 20 seconds later only to go through the same thing again.
We put the thermostat switch on at 20c and the radiators do not seem to start to heat up at all. let alone anything else.
Air lock in the boiler or new pumps? we have two pumps. The boiler is an Apollo.

Buyer beware....

 

[breezer]

i am not a plumber or heating engineer, butit may be that the pipes are not full, try bleeding the raiators, also check the loft tank to see doe the ball cock still work

 

[COG]

As Breezer said but check if your pump is spinning ok, they tend to stick if left off for a time. Appollo boilers are all fully pmped so youe will probably have one or more manual air vents above the pump in the cylender area .

 

[ChrisR]

Yes it sounds starved of water. That can be air, or sludge blocking the feed/vent pipes.
Apollos have tiny heat exchangers. They get just a bit scaled up, then won't run without overheating if the temperature is set to "high". SO you descale them, and they leak like a sieve.
They're also not too safe a design. They've killed over 40 people. Still a lot out there, though!

 

[Am]

Like in our (relatively) new house. Sounds identical to the problem we're having. Bled the radiators, still getting a really nasty noise that sounds like it could actually shake the house apart (it's a modern shoebox - already found out the internal walls aren't quite as robust as I'd like).

Is this something that can be dealt with by a complete novice in these matters - I'm quite happy to try and fix this myself... I just have no idea where to start!