Rayburn Problem

[Dave Venning]

Moved into our house six months ago. It has a fairly old oil fired Rayburn running the hot water and heating. We've put some money into it to get it serviced, and had some new parts fitted, all happy with that. We've also fitted a two zone Salus 500 thermostat so that we can operate the system remotely. It's taken awhile to get the whole system to work well, but we still have one minor problem that has us foxed! When the Rayburn fires up, it will stay on for thirty odd minutes before it reaches its set temperature, from then on it switches off and on every five minutes. Does this sound normal? If not any ideas on a remedy? Thanks.

 

[oilhead]

This is cycling pretty much as one would expect. It is possibly a little more often than some boilers would, because it is producing more heat than it is able to distribute effectively.

 

[Dave Venning]

Hello Oilhead, thanks for your reply. This cycling every five minutes deal can't be right, as I've just found out we've used 1000 litres of oil during the past two months, that's way too much. The previous 1000 litres lasted for four months, I thought that was ok, as the house has five bedrooms. Any ideas I can try? Thanks

 

[Burnerman]

Just going by the amount of crap I have to clear out of these things (every 6 months, really) I have to conclude that they aren't the most efficient device out there.
The cycling situation sounds reasonable, maybe a little frequent but obviously the rads are dispersing heat well enough. Try turning a couple of rads right down and see if the cycle lengthens.
John