Dripping combi boiler - any ideas?

Could be anything - you need to get the front off (isolate the power) and work out where it's leaking from. Might be as mundane as a nut which needs tightening, or it could be as bad as a new boiler job.

David

Digital cameras can be quite handy for inspecting things in inaccessible places, especially as the flash tends to highlight the wet bits.

Though you'll be lucky to get it in focus.

I use a small mirror (handbag size i.e. wot a lady would carry in her handbag) and a torch. Candidates are the auto air vent at the top and any clip-on joints sealed by O-rings. Can be a PITA to get sealed again. What boiler (make & model) is it?

It's a worcester bosch 240. Got the front off, but don't have a great idea of what I'm looking at (even with camera/mirror assistance; boilers are a mystery to me)

Bosch, or just Worcester? I think it's an earlier name for the 24CDi. I had a CDi recently that was leaking from where the hot water out pipe (the only one without a screwdriver-operated valve on its connection to the boiler IIRC) connected to the plate heat exchanger. The connection is made by the pipe just being pushed into the PHE with a rubber O-ring to seal it, which had gone hard.

You can get the manual if you haven't got it already from

You're looking for where water is coming out :-) Can you see drops of water forming somewhere? There may be a tell-tale trail of limescale below it.

Pics and stuff here

Looks like the 240 has a quite different heat exchanger from the 24CDi so ignore what I said about leaking push-fit connections. If it uses the old cast-iron heat exchanger like the CBi it could be leaking from that. If that is leaking it's a major job to strip down but you may not need a new heat exchanger (which costs about £200) as there are steel blanking plates at the right-hand end of the heat exchanger (opposite to where the flow and return pipes connect) and it may be leaking from where these plates join the cast iron lump. Should be possible to fix that.

I use mine for reading the electricity meter under the stairs. Working out what those dials say is difficult enough without being on your knees with an ironing board leaning on you. The focus is spot on due, I presume, to the double flash thing. One to get the focus and one to take the picture. No good for action shots, but perfect for this

Thanks for this. I'll do a proper investigation this evening and post what I find...

Neat! Mine isn't as clever as that (and positively demented when trying to take long-distance shots in low light: it *knows* from the auto-focus that the subject's too far off to illuminate with the flash but it still fires anyway, then spends ages recharging the damn flash before you can do anything even if you just want to switch the flash off and have a go with available light.)

In message , Stuart Noble writes

I use mine for taking photo's up skater dudes baggy shorts, but sometimes they see me and hit me with their skateboard.

Did you know that's why camera phones (or at least Japanese ones) have an audible 'shutter release' which you can't disable, because apparently a proportion of Japanese men have a particular predilection to directing them up schoolgirls' skirts on the subway.

David

In message , Lobster writes

No problem. One snip and the camera's mute.

On a phone camera, that might be a problem.

Thomas Prufer

Please post detailed instructions urgently :-)

Apologies for the extreme lateness of the post, but - if anyone is still interested - it turned out the leak was coming from the divertor valve which had eroded to the extent it needed to be replaced. So not as quick or cheap as tightening a nut, but vastly preferable to having to replace the boiler!