Potterton Boilers- 80/100e - READ THIS IF YOU HW but no CH

[markieb]

Or indeed have any problems with your boiler at all!

Recently had a fault in my boiler which resulted in HW, but no CH.

On inspection the controll PCB was found to be faulty. Basically, the environment in which the PCBs are in - i.e. constantly above 30/40/50 deg C is not a great one for solder on PCBs. Hence they are prone to develop 'dry joints' - which can be seen be a hairline crack in the solder, which is used to make the electronic connection between the components and the circuit (plus it also holds the device in!).

My fault was such that there was a dry joint (plus a complete burn-out!) between the switch & the relay (the big box thing on the board marked Omron). Hence, when the electronic 'ON' signal was being fired, this signal was not reaching the boiler.

My advice would be to always check all the boards for such problems before paying up loads to have them 'inspected' and then replaced. When a simple repair would do.

How can I qualify this? I run a small electronics company and was glad that I was able to apply some knowledge to this!

 

[croydoncorgi]

Up to 60 degrees should not be much of a challenge for WELL-DESIGNED boards with HIGH-QUALITY soldering. And I'm 'surprised' (well, actually gobsmacked!) to hear an 'electronics engineer' comment that dry joints are 'caused' by temperatures in this range. Sadly, what you're looking at is crap design, bad manufacturing and non-existent quality control. If customers are prepared to keep on buying junk, there'll always be someone waiting to supply it.

 

[bripl]

go for the throat and tell him how it is

 

[kevplumb]

hear hear

 

[Bahco]

Do I add Potterton boilers to my Sh1te list fellas?
So far we have Ravenheat, Savio, and a few Baxis.........

 

[ChrisR]

Agree with CC, except that markieb isn't an "Electronic Engineer".

Though this sort of repair is done often enough, you don't know what caused the problem(s), you don't know what the circuits concerned do, you haven't got any idea what sort of functions the board has, and even if you did you wouldn't be able to test it.

Bad Connections can happen for the relatively innocuous reasons described above (ie product is crap), but if a track is burned out then even "bloke with soldering iron" should know better than to prat about with it.

I mean it's not like a hole in a sheet of metal, is it?

 

[bripl]

do i detect alittle bit of sarcasum creeping in chris?

 

[kevplumb]

bit tounge in cheek methinks

 

[ChrisR]

That should be "sarcasm" and "tongue" - I'm sure it's in the regs somewhere...

 

[bripl]

 

[markieb]

Well - came back to this thread a couple of weeks later & saw nothing but abuse. Oh well, I was only trying to be helpful if anyone else had problems with a potterton boiler CH problem. My thread was trying to explain the problem in layman's terms. I really thought that this site was clear of complete tw@ts, but c'est la vie -

The somewhat sarcastic answer threads came from people who clearly know little about electronics & related products. It is not the constant temp of 60deg C that causes it, more the fluctuations in temperature ranges of 10 to over 60deg C over, say, a period of 5/7 years. This cause fatigue on the solder, the solder pad and the plated through hole barrel. You might get a longer life if the board is rated as an industrial temp range product and looking at the board level components this is clearly not the case. I must admit that I thought the point about fluctuations in temp range was obvious - or do you have your boiler on at 60deg C all day and happily burn as many natural resources as you can in your ignorance? I would not be surprised, judging by your complete lack of thought in your answer, Mr Croydoncorgi.

The control board, that I previously described, contains nothing more than a few simple logic devices and passives, there is no PIC or EPROM (sorry is these acronyms mean nothing to you) which would contain the on-board code or FIRMWARE for a more complicated device - hence the circuitry is extremely simple to follow. The problem with my board was that the conection between the relay (which controlled the CH) and the on/off signal from the timer was broken. FYI the relay is the thing you can here click when you turn the boiler on.

ChrisR - I am more than happy to go into the board level functions of the circuit board, but believe it would really go over your head. Although maybe you could sell me one of your own designed surface mount range of circuit boards that are controlled remotely by bluetooth, which cuts out the need to wire up the device to the time control? Perhaps something you can work on after you have removed your head from your @ss.

 

[PEDANTICVINDICTIVEMAN]

Pop, errrr whats this brown stuff !!!!!!!!!

 

[just-thinking]

heating engineers love potterton pumas as always going wrong so a constant supply of work and good for boiler exchange work.
if pins on pcb are damaged or burnt they can be by-passed.just disconnect damaged wire to pin and connect to anternative supply,its usually the neutral feed thats burns out first.

thank you potterton, baxi, vokera.mr sludge and mr scale.all those diy fiddlers for paying for my second house.

 

[ChrisR]

Markieb you get so many things glaringly wrong in your post, it's obvious that you don't feel hampered by not knowing what you're talking about.

As such you aren't worth any effort, but we have to warn others from heeding your drivel.

I have degrees and several years experience in electronics design and production, ditto metallurgy, and I've been mending boilers a while.

 

[technical engineer]

ok if your talking about the pcb for the potterton pumas (which i love working on) i am aware that there is a resister in the top left hand corner of the board thats positioned to close to one of the plugs and usually burns out on the back of the board other than that im not to sure about the whole 50 60 degrees being to hot for solder if that was the case the solder would melt right? and im sure potterton would have taken this into consideration