Our 10 year old Valliant, which has been faultless, I guess could do with a service (not had one for five years). What exactly do gas-certified plumbers do for their £70? And can they be bothered anyway - two I've contacted said they'd come round but then radio silence.
E.
Three fifths of f*ck all according to my mate who's a Corgi plumber. Hoover out dead insects, tap the gas pipe a few times with a screwdriver to dislodge any crap in it. Bugger off again. Save your money. It's not like a car. There's no oil and filter to be changed. If it's working fine leave it alone.
I 'have' to have a service as a condition of the Ideal warranty. For the £25 it costs, I get a various gases printout. Not sure what else it involves, but he does seem to be doing something for all of the 20 minutes it takes.
Not much....
Mate was Gas Safe registered* and was quite reluctant to service boilers because of the inevitable fault later on that "must be your fault" because "it was ok until you touched it".
Think it's been said in here before that anything not room sealed must be checked regularly, and for pretty obvious reasons, whereas modern RSF stuff in good order is probably ok to service less often, although it's clearly not a good idea to neglect them :)
*Forced to retire due to back problems, sadly.Lee
What model Vaillant is it? If it's an Ecomax I would get it serviced and insist that the service includes a replacement of the burner door seal because the earlier ones were made of silicone and could result in various internals getting burnt/melted when they failed* (which they did!)
The new seal is made of graphite.
If it's been in that long though without any trouble, I doubt it would be one of the condensing models..
The boiler installation manual will describe what should be done in a service. In practice, most of that will only happen if you do it yourself, as I do.
I start by measuring the flue gas emissions, and repeat at the end so I know what difference is. Many of the annual contracts check the flue gas emissions and only service the boiler if they're getting bad, which is usually taken as CO/CO2 ratio worse than 0.004. In practice, most of the boilers I look after run at least 10 times better than this (e.g. 0.0004).
Various older conventional boilers with gas jets, the important thing is cleaning all the dust out of the air mixing paths and making sure the jets are clear. If the boiler got bad enough to generate any soot, that must all be cleaned off. Check seals (particularly the flue, and that can include case seals with some models).
For newer condensing boilers, keeping the combustion chamber and heat exchanger clear of debris is important. Most of the these burn in a downward direction and are largely self-cleaning providing the boiler operates in condesnsing mode at least some of the time. My Keston does build up white dust around the top which can be vacuumed out (being very careful not to damage the internal insulation), and the bottom does build up larger pieces of debris which need a more forceful flushing out than just the condensate alone can do. As you get to know a boiler, you know what wears - in the Keston it's the burner gaskit which lasts no more than a few years and always needs replacing if burner removed, and the internal flexible flue pipe, which they have redesigned a few times, but still lasts a max of 5 years - these things should be checked. The Keston is also prone to condensate leaks which should be checked for even if no other servicing is done, as this can quickly write off a boiler if left unchecked. Some boilers may require the combustion mixture to be adjusted, although IME, once you've set that correctly, none of the ones I look after have needed it redone.
For combi boilers, there's also the secondary heat exchanger which may need descaling periodically.
Open-flued boilers present a much more significant risk of killing you, and I would say these must be checked and cleaned every year. There are thankfully fewer of these around nowadays - the last of these across our family went 15 years ago.
With something that old, they will attempt to sell you a new one. My feeling on this is that everyone who has had an old boiler which is not giving issues, and has decided to have it looked at has ended up with a boiler which then gives long strings of faults and ended up needing replacing. I think, unless you have any safety concerns, then leave well alone. Brian
How do I tell - I can't see much in the way of a model number on it externally, inside the bottom door or when the top panel is removed. I can't find any documentation on it although we must have something somewhere.
the only thing is an installation sticker with this: 83 17 92GB05 and what looks like 0998 Mu
E.
The link below might help you identify the model rather than me trying to put it into words ;)
It's in the Turbomax and Turbomax /1E VU/VUW range 1999-2000 so older than I thought although I think we installed it in about 2002. An engineer's dream apparently. That engineer looks great and in my area. But he's a gas man and I was looking also to get someone to look at the central heating as we don't get much in the top floor rads.
E.
They are very easy to work on. He's a decent chap, I'm pretty sure he has others working under him who cover other general central heating related things. Sorting out the upstairs radiators is probably something you could do yourself though.
Have a read of wiki on balancing your system:
The last time my mother had her boiler serviced, they hoovered some dust ou t of the bottom and charged her eighty quid. That was several years ago, t hough, so it's probably gone up now.
The last service of my condensing boiler, some years ago, was included as part of a repair visit. One important test was gas pressure, and it was found to be way too high.
Within the hour the gas supplier had visited to replace the regulator.
Chris
I've already tried to balance it but I can't all the rads (5) on the top (3rd) floor to heat up other than at the bottom - I think maybe as it just works on pressure (no header tank) it's beyond the scope of the design. There's just a lot of air that comes out when I bleed three of them but water doesn't follow. But two of them work more or less. A ladder rad in a small bathroom has never worked beyond about a foot or so since we had it put in - it goes much higher than the others.
One thing that alarms me from reading that Valliant man's site is I presume we have no filter in the system...
i think it's probably worth getting him to do a service and ask for a quick assessment of what he'd do to get the top working and whether we need to address scaling.
E.
As it's a presurised system there is no water avialable to fill the rads as you let the air out ... You need to keep going around the bleed air and repressurise loop for each rad until you get water out of the bleed screw. This is a bit labourious, if there is two of you it might be possible to have some one going round bleeding the rads and have another monitoring the pressure guage and represurising as required. What you want to avoid is over presurising the system, If your mains water pressure is > 2 or 3 bar that precludes you just opening the filling loop and leaving it while you bleed the rads.
But you really need to find out why those top rads have air in them? Have they always been like that? Is it air or hydrogen? Is there any/enough inhibitor in the system? Might be worth bunging some in before you start the full bleeding attempt anyway, it's hard to "overdose" and you'll be letting in a fair amount of fresh, oxygenated, water.
As for a fundemental design problem. What is the pressure in the system? IIRC presurised systems run around 2 bar, if so that is about a 60 foot head of water. So the water won't go any higher than 60' above the pressure guage. 3 floors at 10' per floor gives a ground floor floor level to 3rd floor ceiling level of 40'...
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