Potterton boiler lockout

[zen51]

Hi. I have a Potterton Puma 1100e combi boiler which is giving me no end of grief at the moment.

Over the past week, whenever the hot water is running, say for a shower/ bath, the pilot flame will go out and the boiler will go into lockout. This will many as many as 10 times over a period of as many minutes

British Gas have been out to look at it and told me pretty much every excuse imaginable from low system pressure (which they supposedly fixed, but didn't), to limescale build up in the pipes which they cleaned out but the problem still remians.

I have not done anything to my system to explain this problem, no plumbing or electrical works, this problem just literally started of its own accord..

Can anyone please help...?

Thank you

 

[breezer]

have you got a contract with bg?
if so call them out again (and again, and again) I am being serious.
We have a potty puma 100e, same problem as you.

It must have been about 6 visits by 3 engineers before they fixed it.

But to be fair, the red light doesnt really say what is wrong, just that it has cut out, so it really is a case of try this bit and see.

In total so far this season we have had:

new wax capsule
new main pcb (two of them)
new auto air vent
new overheat stat
vacuum cleaned twice
"fiddled about with a lot"

The last engineer we had, it did take 3 visists, but he did "sort it" he thinks it was the overheat stat and pcb that did it.

call them out and be nice, and give the engineer lots of tea.

oh ours would lock out when it wanted to, and anything up to 9 presses of the "reset" button before it would light, but as i said lockout, doesnt really say much from an engineers pov

If you havent got a bg contract, sorry.

 

[ChrisR]

I'd have thought an obvious bit to check would be the hot water temperature sensor. If the boiler thinks the water isn't hot it will keep heating it until the overheat thermostat turns everything off. Changing the OHS would make a slight difference as a new one would have a slightly different cut off temp.

I expect if you put all the house hot taps on it takes a bit longer to cut out?

A contributory factor can also be scale - do you live in a very hard water area? The temp sensor should still catch the temp but a layer of insulating clag slows down response time as well as impeding heat transfer.

You could try swapping the DHW and CH sensors. You need to drain but they're the same and the test would be free and you might see scale on it.

Yer they be:

corblimeyguv it worked!

Instructions are here

 

[breezer]

thats very nice, but poster has a potty puma 1100e (or do you suppose its a typo, one too many ones) mine is a potty puma 100e

 

[ChrisR]

There isn't a 1100E!
Sounds like an old Leyland heap...

 

[kevplumb]

ahhh them were the days

 

[zen51]

sorry..typo, its a 100e not an 1100e...thank you for the replies so far