Vaillant 242 Combi (Beyond Economical Repair?)

[Agile]

Assuming the filling loop is disconnected the only normal place for the leakage to occur will be within the plate HE.

You can do a final check by turning off the cold feed to boiler and opening a hot tap after setting the boiler pressure back to 1 Bar cold.

Thats quite a simple task to replace yourself if all the other bits are manageable, probably cost less that £50 to buy.

If the PRV is leaking at 2 Bar then it should be replaced.

We already have our agile-services.co.uk domain. All these Yahoo and similar look so unprofessional.

Tony

 

[dfarry]

Yesterday when I was messing about I did turn off the cold water supply to the boiler... this completely cut off the hot water supply... from a tap but I never checked to see if the drain pipe was still leaking.

I have found a guy who is fairly local and specialises in Vaillant boilers, he's replied to a email I sent him and he's said much the same thing as you Tony... but he can't get around for another week.... I'll probably hold on for him now.

Does your host not give you a number of mail accounts as well... couldn't you use them rather than crappy AOL?

 

[Agile]

Yesterday when I was messing about I did turn off the cold water supply to the boiler... this completely cut off the hot water supply... from a tap but I never checked to see if the drain pipe was still leaking.

Does your host not give you a number of mail accounts as well... couldn't you use them rather than rubbishy AOL?

No you have missed the point! With the cold supply to the boler off and hot tap open there is no source of mains to increase system pressure through the faulty plate HE.

We have all email to our domain forwarded to our AOL. We can send from aol under the guise of our domain using IE6 on AOL.

You can replace the plate HE yourself.

Tony

 

[Softus]

We have all email to our domain forwarded to our AOL. We can send from aol under the guise of our domain using IE6 on AOL.

AOL ® ?
aol ® ?
AOL ® ?

 

[dfarry]

We have all email to our domain forwarded to our AOL. We can send from aol under the guise of our domain using IE6 on AOL.

AOL ® ?
aol ® ?
AOL ® ?

Be better to remove AOL altogether really... just add the mail server details into Outlook, Thunderbird or some other mail client direct.

I'm not going to bother with the boiler anymore now.... I wont have time during the week and frankly I can't be bothered - once I have had that guy in I'll update you on what he did.

 

[dfarry]

OK then....

WE HAVE HOT WATER!!

The engineer came around last Friday evening to take a quick look and then returned on Saturday to sort it out.

He ran various tests and also over the Friday evening we isolated the cold water feed, let the pressure out of a open tap and then checked the pressure change over night - there was none.

Firstly the PSV was knackered, he had a new one but though it is supposed to be universal fitting the threads did not seem to match. He did quite the type of PSV that I had and that he would try to get one for me yesterday.... not heard so I assume he wasn't able. Instead he took the old PSV out, cleaned it up and put some PTFE tape around it... this then stopped it from leaking.

Next stop the secondary heat exchanger.... he took it off and found that the heating side was completely clogged up!.... this he cleaned out (and it took some cleaning) and then refitted. The cold water side of the exchanger was scale free so thats good.

Next up the expansion tank.... apparently it was full of water and needed to be recharged - he used a compressor to do this.

AND the really annoying thing...... the pressure was increasing still... I had insisted that the filling loop was leak free (and it had been the week before when I had the loop of the valve for a good 30 minutes or so). He checked this and in his own words "it's p!ssing out" - he therefore capped the valve and left the loop pipe hanging (as it really should be)

He had to fiddle with a few other things as well but apart from the main area's above the boiler was Ok

He did suggest in the spring to get a inline filters that can be fitted to the 22mm return pipe... he said these are inexpensive and work very well... with a valve either side of the filter you can isolate it, clean the filter, refit and then just top up the water - this then will prevent the secondary heat exchanger acting as the filter!.

Also no inhibitor has ever been added to the system..... the original installer told me that it was not necessary as the system was sealed - and I haven't. I can't exactly remember which brand the new engineer suggest I think it was FEREX?.

So that's it the girls in the house are happy and at £90 the resolution did not cost the small fortune I was expecting (new boiler, flushing.....etc...). This guy was really good though... I would definately recommend him to anyone in the SE London area.

Thanks to all you guys on here.... especially Agile and ChrisR who were both on the case with the causes almost as soon as I posted my first message.