User Manuals/instructions for IDEAL Concord WRS 255A needed

[Fred]

Dear all

I am posting this from a one-off email account, in order to prevent the spam-tsunami reaching my real inbox. Sorry for any inconvenience, and hope I do not offend anyone.

I recently bought a lovely house here in UK. As I come from a country where we do not have gas boilers (Iceland - geo thermal), I know little about gas boilers.

I have managed till now by reading info (e.g. the faq on

that have filled me in a little bit.

But I was just calling the lovely company Ideal Boilers Ltd (Tel:[phone]) that happens to be the manufacturer of the boiler in my house.

The reason for my call was I do not have any manuals for the operation of the boiler. The kind customer service person told me that the boiler was so old (eighties something) that they do not have any manuals to send out. Not even photocopies. Nothing.

As the boiler is fully functional and working properly, I have a strange problem. Everything is working fine (heating is fine, but the gas bill is rather high to my taste - which is the reason for starting all of this... I know that the boiler is not as efficient as a new boiler - but would like to start with seeing whether it is running at its designed maximum efficiency), but I do not know how to adjust anything with the boiler controls (there are 1 button,

1 button/turning knob, and one dial knob)

Anyway, as the manufacturer refuses to provide a manual for the safe operation of the boiler they manufactured (which I find very, very strange, I thought this was tightly controlled business in terms of safety and regulations - but what do I know...) I was hoping someone might provide some information on the finer art of controlling elderly boilers of the type: IDEAL Concord WRS 255A gas boiler.

Thanks, Frid

p.s. I do not understand the underlying logic of companies that do not provide on-line archive of older user-manuals. The cost is negligable, and would provide the users with a "warm cosy feeling" of being looked after... which in this case would fit nicely with the image this company should be trying to maintain... but in stead they decide to leave us out in the cold...

[IMM]

Frid,

This boiler is old and very inefficient compared to modern boilers. By installing a new condensing boiler you can drop your gas bills by 30-40%, with a payback of about 3 years. The good thing about that boiler was that is was reliable. But it is coming to the end of its life that is for sure.

I agree that companies that don't support old stock, when they probably sold millions of the product are out of order.

[Ed Sirett]

This boiler is certainly of an older less efficient design. It was not even contemporary technology when it was fitted. 8-(

There is little to these boiler and little to go wrong. 8-)

There is a permananet pilot light which heats a thermocouple which makes a small amount of electricity which holds a gas valve open. There is a further gas valve that is opened when mains electricity is supplied which then lets the gas through to the burner this heats a block of cast iron containing water. The temperature of this block is controlled by a thermostat - a rotary knob with numbers on it usually 1-6. This thermostat is in series with the gas valve so controlling the temperature of the boiler.

Try a middle setting.

[Geo]

No fine points - it just keeps on working. The dial gives approximate flow temperatures of

1 54 2 60 3 66 4 71 5 77 6 82 degrees C For "summer" (hot water only) use 1 or 2. The 'users instructions' is a single A4 page without any other really useful information.

Geo

[IMM]

For summer it is best to use or 4 to avoid condensation occurring in the burner box.

[Neil Jones]

Just as a follow up on Ideal Boilers:- I spoke to them about 6 weeks ago for user and installation manuals for my obsolete Ideal Mexico S2 lump which is also 80's vintage I believe. The chap I spoke to was really helpful and the manuals arrived in the post the next day.

Regards

Neil

[Tony Bryer]

You're assuming that they still have the texts available in machine readable form. They may well be in Ventura for DOS 3.3 or somesuch.

[IMM]

There is no reason why all manuals of all products they have ever made can't be on the web for anyone to download. It is not a difficult thing to do. They want you to buy new products, yet a company that gives excellent after sales tends to keep customers when they do buy again. CRM is something some companies don't know the meaning of. Chaffateux have all their manuals downloadable, as do many others.

[Geo]

Anyway - I have scanned the two pages (about 400k each) so you can download them from:-

also have the 4 page glossy leaflet but it would be a waste of bandwidth (the raw scans are 26Mb per page).

The installion instructions are not suitable for scanning (being mostly obliterated by flue sealant). But if there is anything you want from them let me know...

Geo