Vaillant Ecotec 831 noisy heat exchanger

[oph]

..............
The earnings at BG can be so good ( £36-£46 k with overtime etc. )...............

Maybe if this wage had been posted in the public domain say circa 2003 then there wouldn't have been the explosion ( no pun intended) in our numbers in recent years owing to the fact that the general public thinks we all earn 100K a year.

As I tell my customers over a nice cuppa, If I was on that or HALF that, I wouldnt live in a terraced house with ****e parking

 

[bell824]

Your engineer is definetly wasting your time and their cash, a new heat exchanger may make a difference but it is far from what is required. As i have said before copper paste a new door seal and properly torqued nuts ( would be surprised though if he had a tourque wrench).
20 minute job and problem solved

 

[Agile]

He did say he's asked around, and the only similar problem they'd seen was a boiler that was making a louder noise than mine from new.

There, Vaillant had told them to slacken some of the nuts off slightly (which he pointed out was very counter to the norm, as they hold the gases inside the exchanger), and this had solved the issue.

He does seem to have tried to find a solution but has evidently not had access to anyone with as much experience as some of the people here.

He is not really correct about the nuts either although thats an engineering aspect that he would not necessarily know about.

The seals hold the hot combustion gasses ( 500-600 C ! ) inside the chamber and the nuts merely apply sufficient pressure to the two sides to ensure the seal is adequately compressed. But at the same time not too much pressure to allow some movement as the different parts heat up.

Its not so simple either, because there is a large increase in temperature when the boiler is fired up.

Tony

 

[gaswizzard]

It was for good reason the burner door fixings were changed to nyloc nuts , would this then mean the copper paste is not required as the burner door would/should not come into contact with the Hex.

 

[treytrey]

Just to give an update so you know how the story ended:

I called BG after 11 days were up and asked about my 7-10 days water test, and was told "Oh, it could take up to a month to get results back". I was not best pleased, and spoke to their customer care team who has supposedly got the repairs team manager tasked to call me back some time this week. I shall be giving him an earful in the most constructive way.

Instead I called Vaillant under the warranty, who sent a guy here on the next working day. After explaining the problem, he took the heat exchanger off, greased around the screw holes and other bits and pieces, and re-tightened everything back up. After firing the boiler back up, everything seemed fine with no more clunking noises (so far). Elapsed time from walking through the door to leaving, some 25 minutes.

So everyone who knew what the problem was and how to fix it, thanks very much. The advice was very useful in helping me proceed and get things fixed. Knowing that BG are chasing off down the wrong path meant I could go somewhere else and get the problem fixed in a timely fashion.