Problem with Falcon II Combi boiler (no CH, strange noises)

[d50ate]

Hi,

I'm living in a student house with an FER Industrie Falcon II Combi boiler.

The domestic hot water supply works fine - both upstairs and downstairs taps. Unfortunately, none of the radiators work. When first turned on there is a lot of weird noise, a banging and creaking in the pipes (water hammer?). Looking at the boiler, the flame does not come on for the central heating, only for domestic hot water, and light #5 is on steady, apparently indicating "electric power supply". The pressure is at 0.8 bars or so.

The heating was set to automatic over the holidays (about a month or so), coming on for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evenings, as recommended by our landlord. When we returned on Saturday, we turned off the timer and resumed turning the heating on and off manually whenever we feel the house is too cold.


As far as I know the problem began yesterday - it was working fine for a few days and now it's suddenly stopped.

Thank you very much for any help you can offer!

 

[Agile]

Why dont you just call the landlord and let him get a competent boiler engineer?

If I was the Landlord I would not want an unqualified tenant fiddling with my gas appliances!

Tony

 

[d50ate]

Why dont you just call the landlord and let him get a competent boiler engineer?

If I was the Landlord I would not want an unqualified tenant fiddling with my gas appliances!

Tony

I haven't 'fiddled' with anything. I was just wondering if this is an easily remedied problem that can be fixed without troubling the landlord or calling out an engineer.

 

[Agile]

Your description does not point to anything obvious other than a diverter jammed in the DHW position which is not very common. That would not be "simple" to fix.

When I was a student I did not want to be repairing the landlords gas appliances either.

 

[d50ate]

Further symptoms: Reset the boiler just now and turned on the heating. Burner came on for 45 seconds or so before turning off to a crescendo of clanking creak sounds from the back of the boiler, at which point the "central heating circuit standby" light started flashing.

 

[Nixt]

FER Industie is Ferroli under another trading name. I believe the Falcon is based on the Modena. If so they don't have a diverter valve, Dhw is produced thru a bi-thermic heat exhanger and unlike the Worcester Junior SE has no pump run/o'run in Dhw mode. This means pump may be at fault as boiler designed to give hot water if pump fails but no CH.

 

[d50ate]

Rang the landlord today - she mentioned that the peope occupying the house last year had similar problems after christmas and that she recommended "flicking some switches" until it works. Have reset the clock and on/off timers on the boiler but to no avail - the heat comes on for 45 seconds then shuts off again. Woud shutting down the boiler completely and then starting it up again help?

 

[Agile]

Better to try spinning the pump/

See how in the FAQ section of this web site.

Isn't that helpful of the landlord to say they had same problems last year but not apparently send out the CORGI engineer to fix it?

Tony