Trianco TRG80 - fire keeps dying

[Terrywookfit]

Cameras were a wonderful invention !!

 

[Falladaboy]

Sorry - I don't get that.

 

[Terrywookfit]

For vent pipe id.

 

[Falladaboy]

Can't take a photo at the moment, as I rely on my wife's phone for that. But I think it is the pipe that comes out of the top centre of the h/w cylinder, turns back towards the back wall of the airing cupboard to a T-connector, and then branches left and right; I think one of these branches must then go up through the ceiling to the expansion tank (?). Anyway, with the immersion heater having been on earlier today, the vent pipe is warm to the touch, coming off the cylinder - if that was the question. Boiler is not running at present, so I can't check the boiler + vent pipe combination right now. Let me know if photo would still be helpful!

 

[Terrywookfit]

That is a vent but wrong one.
Two 28 mm pipes will connect to the side wall .Bottom One has a 15mm pipe attached.
Top one has a 22 mm pipe attached......That is the primary flow and vent.

 

[Falladaboy]

Very hard to see - airing cupboard very tight, pipework very congested, and everything lagged in years of dust and fluff! But what I think I see is this: the 28 mm pipe that enters the side of the cylinder at the bottom seems just to run away to a 90-degree elbow and then goes down through the floor - obviously to the boiler, which is more or less directly underneath - so only a matter of feet below the cylinder. I can't see any 15 mm pipe branching off it. The top 28 mm pipe, which enters the cylinder halfway up the side, reduces to a 22 mm pipe, which seems to run up the wall into the loft.

Does that make sense? All the heat in the cylinder - now from the immersion heater only - is above this upper 28 mm pipe, so neither 28 mm pipe is what I'd call warm, and certainly not hot. For what it's worth, I've tried to upload a photo of the top of the cylinder that we took earlier; the 22 mm pipe I mentioned is one of the three vertical pipes on the back wall on the right of the picture.

 

[wellfan]

If anyone still watching this, I can confirm that crap fuel is the issue. Been using a TRG45 for over 35 years, and Anthracite supplies where I live are just awful. Really disappointing as this system is wonderful when it works, but poor quality anthracite is its nemesis.

 

[Falladaboy]

Thanks for your message! Sounds as if you have had similar problems, then. We're on our second Trianco since 1976 - now it's a TRG80. Never (knowingly) had a problem with the fuel until now. But it has to be the fuel. The problems started exactly when I started to use the anthracite grains from a new 3-tonne order, delivered end of March. And I've checked the boiler out, cleaned everything - a DIY service, basically: there isn't a lot of adjustments anyone can make on these, after all. And I had the chimney swept for good measure.
I could keep the fire in for a couple of days, with the fan running for hours to get up to the thermostat setting; but every two days I would lose the fire and have to relight. Added to which, the water in the h/w cylinder never got properly hot - though four heat leak radiators would get very hot indeed, and the central heating worked fine. Until the fire died again within 24 hours ... It was driving me NUTS for nearly two months. I left it at the start of June, when we normally aim to shut down for the summer; the immersion heater seems expensive, but not when you compare it with the daily solid fuel bill!
I'll need fresh fuel at some stage - my supplier collected 100 bags on Monday for a refund (I'm grateful for that, at least - that the supplier is not arguing the toss here). But how am I ever going to be sure of getting decent-quality anthracite again? It's like bloody Russian roulette ...

 

[Falladaboy]

Hello again,

Have relit the boiler again after the summer shutdown, using a different batch of anthracite delivered in July. Too soon to tell if the coal is good or bad; but I already note that for some reason the DHW is still not getting properly hot in the cylinder, even though pipes and heat-leak radiators are very warm and apparently functioning as they should. So why is the DHW not up to temperature? Can anyone diagnose that one, please?

 

[Stadan20]

Air lock in the cylinder coil perhaps

 

[Falladaboy]

Thanks for replying. All our problems began with a delivery of poor-quality fuel back in March; I won't go into it all again (it's all explained at great length earlier in this thread!).
So it's difficult not to see the DHW problem as a direct result of that - otherwise it would be a big coincidence that we had fuel problems on the one hand, and a completely separate issue with the HW cylinder on the other.
Which is not to say that a coincidence is impossible, of course. And what you suggest would explain it, I guess - so the question is, how does one clear an air lock?

 

[Stadan20]

When it's heating the water hold the top pipe of the coil and see how hot it gets if it doesn't get very hot I would gently crack the nut where the pipe goes onto the cylinder first if this is a very old cylinder be careful. Any air will release from there . When water starts to come out then tighten it back up

 

[Falladaboy]

I'm no plumber, and don't know which is the "top pipe of the coil". I think we have two one-inch pipes entering the cylinder side wall - one very low down, which is pretty much cold, and one about halfway up, which is actually very hot. Would that be the one - the higher one of those two?

 

[Stadan20]

Yes it would be . Sounds like it's not circulating through that coil . You could turn off the leak rad and see if that will push it through

 

[Falladaboy]

Are you saying that BOTH 1" pipes going into the cylinder should be hot to the touch (maybe one hotter than the other, but both hot)? If so, that would be a big clue.

Thanks for the other suggestion - the leak rad. In fact, there are at least 4 rads that get hot from the boiler - heat creep - even when the pumped CH is not running. But I guess it is the nearest rad, in the bathroom, a few feet from the airing cupboard, that was designed and installed as the heat leak. Does that sound plausible?
Otherwise I'd be looking at getting a plumber to loosen the nut on the copper cylinder. It is old, and slightly buckled at the top where one plumber couldn't slacken the big nut on a broken immersion heater once. So I certainly wouldn't trust myself to try that!