Gas valve solenoid

[Roger Mills]

The main gas valve solenoid has given up on my elderly Baxi Solo boiler

- the coil is open circuit, and thus does nothing when mains is applied. The valve itself works - if I push in the rod which is operated by a lever from the solenoid, the main burner fires ok.

What are the chances of being able to replace just the solenoid assembly

- or even just the coil?

I can replace the whole valve for about £130 for a new one or £65 for a used one, but would prefer to spend as little as possible 'cos the whole boiler is probably going to need replacing before too long - it's about

28 years old, but has been working perfectly until today.

It's a Honeywell valve - probably a V4347C or somesuch - but I can't see the label without removing it. The Baxi part number is 225959.

I have removed the solenoid assembly and then removed the coil from that. Here are a couple of photos of the coil:

The circular part has an OD of about 30mm and a stepped ID - about 9.6 one end and 10.2 at the other end. The thickness is about 16.4mm. It has a flange at one end with 2 spade connectors on one side and a hook to engage with a metal plate on the other side. There's no obvious identification on it, but it does say 'A3' in one place and '11' in another.

Is this likely to be a fairly standard part? If so where might I get one? Otherwise, where might I get the solenoid assembly. Google wasn't very helpful!

TIA.

[Tim Lamb]

In message [e-mail]>, Roger Mills [e-mail] writes

Don't know but I can offer you or anyone else interested a relatively young Potterton precision boiler, filter and new flue.

3 years work followed by 2 years sat on a pallet in my barn!

[John Rumm]

Have you got a photo of the valve itself? (ISTR I have a spare valve knocking about in the workshop that I pulled from a working Mexico).

[newshound]

I have certainly swapped solenoid coils in the past on washing machine / dishwasher inlet valves.

[Roger Mills]

Thanks for the thought, It looks like this:

I think that particular valve was only ever fitted to to fan-assisted early Solos.

In the event, I have bitten the bullet and order a new complete valve - which should arrive tomorrow.

[Trevor Smith]

I replaced one last year on a Honeywell valve on my Mexico boiler. I got it from Travis Perkins think it was about 15gbp

[Andrew Gabriel]

Same here. Relative has a Hotpoint washer drier where they hardly ever used the drier, and it has a 3-way cold water inlet. When the first valve failed, I replumbed the hoses and connections internally so the condensing water feed to the drier became the main inlet, which worked but has a flow restrictor so filling was slow. When that one burned out too, CPC had a dual inlet valve very cheaply and I thought I'd get and just leave the drier condensor disconnected as it had been for a while.

However, having bought the dual valve, I found I could push the coils off the valves and hence swap over the two burned out ones and keep the triple inlet valve fully in use.

10+ years ago, had a call from a friend just as all his inlaws were about to arrive for the weekend. They had a modulating Baxi, where I quickly found the gas valve had burned out. This was a follow-on to secondary hot water plate exchanger having got furred up so badly that the boiler was cutting in and out repeatedly when serving hot water, and I guess this contributed the coil burnout. I phoned around and found a company in Luton had the non-modulating version of the same valve, and took a punt on it. Being careful to catch the pingfuckits, I transfered the modulating module on the side to the new gas valve which had a blanking plate in its place. It worked perfectly, and was about 1/10th the price of the Baxi part (which I couldn't get the same day in any case).