Vaillant ecotec plus 418. Many problems.

[EricTheFedUp]

Well the saga continues, they found a wiring fault upstairs but not very talkative when i question what the
problem is. Trade secrets or are they still just guessing?

Good news is the pump no longer runs for hours at a time.

Yet im still not sure all is well, the temperature seems to fluctuate way too much, i set the room stat in the
hallway to 18 degrees and i had to manually shut the boiler off, recording temps of over 22 degrees.

I lowered the stat to 13 degrees and sometimes its fairly cold and still wont switch on the heat but
when it does kick in its still hitting 20 degrees plus.

Since having this boiler fitted my gas/electric bills have increased £18 a month??? Something not
right somewhere. Energy monitor is often showing a 400w reading at night when everyone else
has gone to bed. Sometimes dropping to mid 300's.

I do have a pond with a 40w airpump and a 50w waterpump, fridgefreezer and a chest freezer
and the BB router and a few phones on charge.

I need to try and narrow down whats using all that power. Never seems to drop below 350watts.


Anyway back to the question, Any suggestions on why the temperature fluctuates so much, when set to
13 degrees its hitting 20+. I turned the stat up to see where it clicked to come on to start heating
and it was at 22 degrees on the room stat which is in the hallway.

From that i assum the stat thinks the temps at 22 yes the dial is on 13 so should not be heating still?

Thanks again.

 

[EricTheFedUp]

They are not due out until tomorrow and we have just got up to no heat again.

It seems like the boiler started up and heated the hot water but no heating, i turned the dial
and you can hear it click around 17 degrees, i turned it upto 20 degrees so the heating
should be on, but nothing. Its been almost 15 minutes now and still no heating.

The pump is running though. Seems like switching the heating on just enables the
pump.

Please help, this is beyond a joke now.

 

[EricTheFedUp]

Anyone?

All he did was turn the heating dial up above that of the water temp dial, well that did something because
this morning we woke up with heat but no hot water.

The electrical valve was on heating only even though both water and heating were on and the water was
barely warm at all.

 

[Dan Robinson]

This is beyond what an internet forum can help with - we need electrical checks and first hand insight.

I can be fairly certain that finding the fault wouldn't take much - rectifying might be something else.

 

[Agile]

Seems to me that the skills or interest of this "big company", as yet unnamed, leave a lot to be desired.

So how do others explain this apart from a lack of skills and interest in solving the problem?

When I go to a job I expect to identify the fault and solve it on the one visit. Since I don't charge for subsequent visits I cannot afford not to do it all on one visit.

Tony

 

[EricTheFedUp]

Thanks guys, i appreciate that there is not much you can do from a message box and little i can do because its
not my boiler. I was hoping you could give me some pointers on what he should be doing and how my system
actually works.

All he did was turn up the dial on the heating to above that of the water temp. Now we get no hot water
in the morning, but the heating comes on.

Said he needs to be there when it kicks in and he will come Friday, err it kicks in at 6:30am and your going
to be here then? Well the answer to that was no he didnt come.

After turning up the heating dial the heating now comes on in the morning but we do not get hot water anymore.
The switch in the airing cupboard was on heating only for some odd reason? Heating and water are on timed
and should have been on at the same time.

Turn the heatiung dial down so that both are on 60 degrees we tend to get hot water only, But sometimes
we do get heating. Related to the settings on those 2 dials? With both dials on 60 maybe the heating only
comes on if the water is hot already? Otherwise it only heats the water?

The people contracted are "NPOWER", the guy is arrogant, condescending and downright onbnoxious.

He will not listen to the list of issues because he knows best, for someone that knows best why did
he need to make a phone call asking for help? This was when he blamed the electric distribution
switch because the little tab that showed the position was partly broken. It was like that when
we moved in almost 18 years ago.

He accused my of watching it all the time, err no but when its cold and the heating should be on
its not hard to notice. When the thermostat in the hall was on 17 degrees and i have to manually switch
the boiler off when temps reached 24 degrees, he said its supposed to overshoot. 7 degrees overshoot???

Then tells me i should not have it set that low anyway and his heating comes on at 18? If i set it to 18
its like a furnace in here. The room stat seems to know the correct temp though. With room temps
at 20+ i turned the dial up and then down and it clicked at the correct temp.
So it knew the room temp was 20+ but didnt turn it off.

Thanks for reading and hopefully you can think of something.

At least the pumps not running all the time now..

But current issues...

Both water and heating set to 60 degrees we usually get no heating, Heating dial set to 68 we get
no hot water. Valve position heating only.

Heating overshoots the stat, intermittent.


Maybe me, but It seems to take longer for the hot water to hit the taps, odd since the bathroom taps are within
10 feet of the water tank? I accept this maybe me. But everything else he mentions i do not think is me.

Honest opinions please... Please be open i will not be offended.

 

[EricTheFedUp]

Time: 22:56, Heating went off 26 minutes ago and its 22.7 degrees C. Even though the stat is
currently set to 18.

Water is luke warm.

Maybe i just need a shoulder to cry on

 

[Steelmasons]

I feel your pain Eric.......put yer hand in yer pocket and get it sorted...

 

[mogget]

Why not use the immersion and a couple of fan heaters till it's fixed?

 

[AGAS]

i think you need a "friend " or ask the audience or 50/50

 

[mogget]

By the way, if you have a standard y-plan system as you imply, the hot water dial won't (shouldn't) do anything.

Does the thermostat turn the heating on and off when you turn it up and down? It could just be wildly inaccurate (some are)

Unless you fancy learning how the system's meant to work and repairing the fault yourself at your own risk, I think you're going to have to persuade the HA to eventually fix it, but it could take a while unfortunately. They tend to move rather slowly from what I can tell.

Without the indicator present, diagnosing the fault may be more difficult.

 

[bernardgreen]

It might be worth asking the next "technician" if the link shown here in red as been removed.

Terminal 4 is an input that controls the boiler's firing up or not when basic hardwired external controls ( thermostats , timers etc ) are used.
Terminal 3 is an output from the control module on the PCB that responds to inputs via the E-bus thermostat and other inputs.

If the E-bus s not being used ( no connection on terminals 7 8 9 ) then the state of output Terminal 3 could be random and therefore should not be connected to Terminal 4

 

[Dan Robinson]

 

[simond]

Well that is certainly alternate thinking, Bernard.

Alternate thinking even to Vaillant, who made the bl**dy thing.

 

[D_Hailsham]

Make and model no of room thermostat?

Make and model no of motorized valve?

The "HW" temperature dial on the boiler does absolutely nothing - it's there for use in combi versions.

The Heating temperature at the boiler needs to be at 70 or the water in the cylinder will not be heated to 60.