Potterton Suprima 80HE

[RoFi]

My boiler was fitted in Sep 2005 - it is wall mounted behind a kitchen cupboard with horizontal flue directly out the back wall. Last Nov water started flowing out of the bottom of the boiler, through the grills in the cover, which coincided with a heavy downpour. Heating repair guy came who had incidentally fitted the boiler; couldn't work out where water came from but resealed around flue inside & out - boiler restarted ok as it had dried out. On Monday same happened, again heavy downpour - turned off boiler, called guy again - I tried to see if water coming from overflowing gutter, but don't think this is the problem - Heating guy did a lot of head shaking & 'never seen this before' - he had no idea where water was coming from as the whole of the inside of the boiler was wet, suggested changing flue to roof exit or another wall! That night another downpour & you guessed it - flooded kitchen. The surround of the flue pipe inside the house leading to the boiler appears dry. In all likelyhood the boiler is now dead and I will have to have this replaced but I want to find out where the water is coming from before I spend more money - any ideas ? Is it worth contacting the Gas Safe register for advice ?

 

[lightning]

Where does the condensate pipe into???

 

[RoFi]

...out of the bottom of the boiler, through the outside wall and cuts in, at downward angle into the gutter downpipe.

 

[lightning]

Check if down pipe is not blocked!! so back flowing through condensate.when its heavy raining, had one of theses the other day aload of moss was blocking down pipe.

 

[howstricks]

ROFI, similar probs early this year with the same model. 5 year old HE suprima after bad weather leaking badly. Cut a long story short- boiler leaked intermittantly when colder,rainy weather, it Could be condense trap chocked, it is an aluminium flue it corroded around telegan test point which i had to replace. on the condensing heat exchanger the seal on the sump and oultet are really thin rubber just like Baxi Barcelona sump seal. These prob not been repalced and are liable of thinning and leaking. tell tale signs poor combustion and orange staining back o heat exchanger, but ur rgi shoiuld pick these things up.hope this helps.

 

[RoFi]

sorry for the delay in responding - Accountant by day - Plumbing/Heating Investigator by night ! thanks for the thoughts - investigated the downpipe situation - appears that the connection to the soakaway might be an issue in that when hosepipe used to simulate heavy rain, it looks like a blocked downpipe further down the line - builder is now on the case - assuming this is the reason for the water coming back into the boiler via the condensate outlet pipe which is cut into the downpipe, hopefully this will not happen again. My question now is, given that the boiler itself has dried out and my Gas Engineer is not returning to investigate for another three weeks (!!), is it safe to try and run the boiler? - is there enough fail-safes to prevent anything serious happening given that we are dealing with Gas, which is not something to be taken lightly - will the Lockout on the PCB prevent serious mishap ?

 

[howstricks]

sorry for the delay in responding - . My question now is, given that the boiler itself has dried out and my Gas Engineer is not returning to investigate for another three weeks (!!), is it safe to try and run the boiler? - is there enough fail-safes to prevent anything serious happening given that we are dealing with Gas, which is not something to be taken lightly - will the Lockout on the PCB prevent serious mishap ?

there are lockout devices ignition etc but to be honest would really like u to get it checked out by a fellow rgi, cover yourself.if he ain't seen it since it got soaked thru again and u dried it out safety first. 3 weeks mate, ats a long time. no surprised by chocked drain backfilling etc.