Thank you to those who suggested something might have frozen outside. I knew this could happen, but for whatever reason it hadn't occurred to me it was that cold. There's a little elbow of copper pipe outside leading from the boiler, six inch off the ground, never gets the sun, so as cold as it can get. Got home half an hour ago and poured two kettles full of boiling water on that. Just tried the boiler and the most beautiful blue flame is burning away.
So glad you are sorted! Next time ask for help straight away please, even if you don’t like to accept food/cash we could have had you warm!
I'm showing my intelligence levels here but I just spent 5 minutes trying to work out where you got boiling water from for the kettle if your boiler didn't work.
Condenser pipe. Fairly common issue. Glad to hear that you’re all fixed up. Mebbies a bit of lagging?
well done JD - think it was you who suggested Jay's pipes !! should be checked in case they were frozen.
Get your missus to sedn you some of her clarts. Get them wrapped around it. At least then you can sleep in the knowledge that shes helping keep your little pipe warm...
Not the condensate pipe. Sounds like the blow off pipe to me. Condenser pipe is plastic not copper and should be diverted into a drain not to the floor. Very surprised the boiler started working again after putting hot water on the blow off. Anyway glad your back up and running
Now Jay is back up and running, can i ask the boiler experts...... Quite often our heating doesn’t come on in the morning. My other half says it’s because the pressure has dropped, and he “tops it up”, and it comes back on. However, he has mentioned that it might be time for a replacement, as it’s around 10 years old. Any suggestions? Do we need a new one, and if so, what are the best deals?
When did you last have it serviced? I think there must be a leak somewhere if you're constantly having to top it up. I had to top ours up the other day but it hadn't been touched since it was serviced in the summer. Properly serviced it should last a few years longer than 10.
I have the opposite problem! It's in our garage and when it drops really cold (like now) it won't turn off! Just comes on permanently regardless of what the indoor thermostat tells it to. Woke up in the night like I was on an overnight trip to the surface of the sun. Only way to stop it is to turn the heating off completely on the boiler. I presume it's set like that to stop the pipes freezing in cold weather and will have an external thermostat which is perhaps set too high? But I've always been wary about playing with that
At ten years you could probably get a few more years out of it if you have a decent one. When ours did that a few years ago, it eventually packed in after months of topping it up and it developing an obvious leak. Have a look at the pipes coming out of the bottom of it to see if they are corroded and possibly wet. Ours needed a new part which you need an engineer to do but it was significantly cheaper than replacing the whole thing. Daft question but you haven’t been bleeding the radiators and forgotten to tighten it back up properly have you as that would also cause it to lose pressure. Basically, it’s a closed system so it has to be leaking out somewhere.
If the pressure is dropping you’ve got a leak somewhere possible culprits could be a pin ***** in a radiator pipe or the PRV inside the boiler
