My boiler is about 21/2 years old, and has started a horrible groaning when the thermostat kicks in and it is heating up. I had a guy in from British Gas on my maintenance contract who checked it over, said the boiler itself was in good condition. His diagnoses was
*kettling*. He has added some sort of chemical to the system to stop it but tells me it can take 2 to 6 weeks to cure the problem! Can anyone tell me if this sounds right? Seems a long time?Brian :o(
Hi Brian are you in a 'hard water' area by any chance ?
Gio
Yes! is the short answer.
Baxi recommend a plumbed in water softener for hard water installations to treat the incoming water supply-see your boiler installation booklet to stop premature furring up of the heat exchangers.
Thanks
That's a different problem. The kettling is in the primary heat exchanger. Are you regularly having to top up the pressure? That could be the cause of it.
A water softener is to protect the secondary heat exchanger, but that doesn't lead to kettling, just cooler hot water (and eventually the water may run cold or alterate hot and cold).
The pressure seems to be holding OK, but its only 2 days since the engineer had the system open so I will keep an eye on it. After this boiler was fitted originally, had a problem with a similar sort of noise which turned out to be the changeover valve, the baxi tech changed the O rings in the valve and its been allright to this point. I was wondering if something similar has happened again?
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