This doesn't look like France! (1 Viewer)

[Allanm]

Booked our crossing a few days ago to spend a nice long weekend over the channel in the land of Vin and croissants.
Then it started raining and just before we were about to leave, we noticed water coming out of the central heating boiler in the kitchen at home.
All hands to the pumps ( and towels). Drain down the system, but still the water pours out.
After about an hour of stripping parts away and trying to figure out where all this water is coming from, I opened another hatch on the boiler and out drops some lichen!
Now, I know lichen doesn't grow in boilers, it's usually in gutters and on roofs. Then, a Eureka moment!
The condensate pipe goes out of the bottom of the boiler into a down pipe. Pulled the pipe away and thd drain is blocked, forcing water back up the pipe, into the boiler and out of the fan on top of the boiler manifold

B****er!

All the electronics are drying out now, looks like we're going to need an engineer to strip the boiler down to see if if is salvageable.
I hope so, just been quoted £1800 for a new one.
That's 292 gallons of diesel! Almost 9000 miles of motorhoming......


Allan

 

[scousebird]

Oh dear, sympathy coming your way. Hope you get it sorted

 

[scousebird]

Just noticed you're in Kent. Where do you live? I can recommend Nick Cunningham based in Sandwich, our lettings department at work use them all the time for plumbing/heating problems, not necessarily the cheapest but very good.

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[durhamahoy]

Booked our crossing a few days ago to spend a nice long weekend over the channel in the land of Vin and croissants.
Then it started raining and just before we were about to leave, we noticed water coming out of the central heating boiler in the kitchen at home.
All hands to the pumps ( and towels). Drain down the system, but still the water pours out.
After about an hour of stripping parts away and trying to figure out where all this water is coming from, I opened another hatch on the boiler and out drops some lichen!
Now, I know lichen doesn't grow in boilers, it's usually in gutters and on roofs. Then, a Eureka moment!
The condensate pipe goes out of the bottom of the boiler into a down pipe. Pulled the pipe away and thd drain is blocked, forcing water back up the pipe, into the boiler and out of the fan on top of the boiler manifold

B****er!

All the electronics are drying out now, looks like we're going to need an engineer to strip the boiler down to see if if is salvageable.
I hope so, just been quoted £1800 for a new one.
That's 292 gallons of diesel! Almost 9000 miles of motorhoming......


Allan

Hope you get sorted. Ours froze 2 winters ago and the water backed up destroying the circuit board ..not nice.
Steve

 

[TheTwoOfUs]

We had a similar problem. The boiler kept cutting out, then one day when it was raining heavily we noticed that water was pouring out of the boiler. We managed to get an engineer out straight away who had a quick look round and then asked where the condensate pipe was. He pulled it away from where it entered the downpipe and the flow of water from the boiler stopped immediately. What had happened was that the downpipe had become blocked at the bottom and rainwater backed up until it was high enough to enter the boiler. We had about a year of engineers calling to these intermittent faults and not one of them spotted that the condensate pipe had been incorrectly connected to the downpipe from the gutter. All the previous problems arose because when it rained the downpipe partially filled with water which unbalanced the boilers flue causing it to register as a fault and thus tripping the control panel. The condensate pipe is now vented directly into a grate and we have had no problems since. So my advice is that if you have a condensate boiler, check out where the condensate pipe vents and make sure that there is no possibility of it becoming blocked.

 

[gasman2008]

if the condensate drain has a vertical section, you can get a condensate alarm device. this has a float that shows when the drain has blocked and even has a hose to drain the boiler into a bucket.

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[Allanm]

Well, we have heat and hot water!
I dried all the electronics, luckily I switched everything off and removed fuses before the water got ink the control unit.
Dried the boiler out and left if overnight
Put it all back together, filled the radiators and turned it on.
Fired up strIght away and is working fine.
There just happened to be a heating engineer next door this morning and I got him to check it was all back together properly.
Took the down pipe apart outside , it was blocked, so I cleaned out the accumulated muck and it's all back together.
Phew!
Got a couple if agents to value the house next week, we could be full timing soon.....

Allan

 

[Allanm]

Just noticed you're in Kent. Where do you live? I can recommend Nick Cunningham based in Sandwich, our lettings department at work use them all the time for plumbing/heating problems, not necessarily the cheapest but very good.

We are in Whitstable. All seems ok at the moment but we will bear him in mind. Thanks
Allan