Came in the other day and tried to switch the CH on and the slidey knob for the CH fell out of the box.
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Looks like one of the two plastic clips that hold the knob into its channel has snapped off. The HW one is still ok. With a bit of tinkering with the electrodes sticking out of the back of the knob I've got it held loosely in place and can at least operate the CH with it thankfully. However I can't see how to remove the programmer from the wall to replace it. There are no obvious screws and I'm guessing some part of the front cover snaps off if you lever in the right place to reveal a backplate. Anyone familiar with this thing?
Programmers these days fit on to standard single gang wall plate that has two screws in the bottom edge, look along the bottom face of yours near to the wall?
Looking at the picture on the plumcentre website there does appear to be a notch/levery slot in the bottom face sort of in the middle (front to back) and under the switches.
I can't find an online user or installation manual, the potterton site appears to be boilers only. I guess this thing is just badged...
I've had another look but still stumped. It does appear to lever upwards a bit like it slots down onto the baseplate from above but I'm cautious about levering too hard in case I rip some wires out. At least at present it does actually still work and losing my CH completely in this weather isn't an option. If it'll last me through the winter I'll attack it a bit more vigourously next year.
Me absurdly happy bunny. Phoned Potterton technical and they said to stick a screwdriver into a little hole underneath the bottom right of the unit and that should push back a catch and enable the unit to be pulled off the backplate. Firkled around with several different sized screwdrivers for a few minutes and finally something went click and I got the bugger off. Whether I could do it again easily is another matter. I have no idea how exactly the clicky thing went click or in which direction I was levering when that happened but I guess if I did it once I could do it again eventually.
Now to dismantle the control unit and see what's broken. There are several plastic latches which you flick back with a screwdriver holding the top cover to the bottom half and one obvious screw which I removed first. Ended up with it still refusing to separate at one corner. After much more buggeration I found another screw lurking invisibly underneath a sticker. Bah. Peeled off the sticker and took the screw out and the unit fell apart at which point about a dozen assorted plastic knobs with little rubber backing pieces fell out onto the floor. Oh arse. Managed to find them all and then had to work out how they all fitted back into place into little holes in the circuit board in the bottom half of the unit. Finally sorted that and then I swapped the broken slider from the CH control in the cover plate for the good slider from the HW control. As I'd suspected a bit of the CH slider had broken off and it's probably too small for superglue to fix although I'll try that another time.
A bit of careful jiggling to get the top cover back onto the bottom half with the circuit board and all the little buttons sticking up so that every button lined up with every hole in the top cover and then I could click the latches into place, screw the two screws in and click it back onto the wall backplate. So now I've got reliable CH control again and if the HW slider is a bit iffy and keeps falling out I can live with that. It only needs to go on for an hour every couple of days. The CH I need all the time and don't want to click off at random intervals when the slider fails to make contact.
Job jobbed, at least for now. I just need a new slider button for what's now the HW control to make it a proper repair but of course there are no spares available. "Sorry sir you need to buy a complete new unit." Typical.
Probaly just a push inwards as Potterton technical said. B-)
A very common thing. Users can't get access without damaging the sticker. Thus a bit of a give away that the unit has been fiddled with and thus invalidating any warranty.
You'll know next time you take something apart to hold it together until you are ready to slowly ease it apart. B-)
Depends on what the plastic is if superglue is the best adhesive. If it's a sytrene based plastic (ABS etc) plastic model aircraft glue would be better. But as you say if it's only a tiny bit there may not be enough for any glue to work well.
And you have that nice warm inner glow of fixing something without too much agro. B-)
It may even turn out to be a satisfactory long term solution. The channel for the HW control which the broken slider is now in seems to be a tighter fit, perhaps it's been used less, than the CH channel and the broken slider actually doesn't want to just fall out anymore or even come out again without a gentle pull so I'm hoping it'll be happy in there for a good few years yet.
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