Ideal Boilers

[Harry Stottle]

I recently had an Ideal Isar boiler fitted (under the Warm Front scheme), and when the boiler was bought into my house, it contained a lot of water. I asked the fitters if this was a used boiler because of the dripping water, and was told they are tested with water at the factory before being sent out. This seemed hard to believe because of possibility of water getting into the electrics whilst under transportation, and the risk of water damaging the packaging, but I was assured that this was the case, and is also done by other manufacturers. Can anyone please confirm if this is true with Ideal boilers?

[Franko]

My Bosch Worcester was the same, pressure tested at the factory with water. There was a paragraph in the manual that stated as much so seems normal practice. Franko.

[YAPH]

common practice and nothing to worry about (unlike the fact that it is an Ideal Isar, but I think we've been there :-|)

[Harry Stottle]

Thanks for the replies, and the confirmation, but it still amazes me that they pressure test with water when the boilers could probably be more efficiently pressure tested with air, less messy and less likely to cause other problems.

[YAPH]

Think of it as a free starter pack of water supplied with the boiler :-)

[Tim Downie]

Much safer to test with an incompressible fluid. Compressed gas can store and awful lot of energy.

Tim

[Harry Stottle]

It can also be carefully regulated.

[Clot]

Spot on. Loved it! :)

[ransley]

Do you think you got the correct answer here, you have to contact the manufacturer, my boiler came dry, dont worry it was a different brand.

[John Rumm]

True with most IIUC. Mine came with plastic plugs blocking all the main waterways in and out, so that it did not dribble out until you were ready for it to do so.

[Harry Stottle]

Do you think you got the correct answer here, you have to contact the manufacturer, my boiler came dry, dont worry it was a different brand.

The inspector from Warm Front had checked with the manufacturer, and said that they told him it was normal for the boilers to contain water. I just wanted to verify it independently because this was an excuse used by a well known retailer of washing machines many years ago, when they were selling machines as new after being returned by customers as faulty, (resulting in prosecution if I remember correctly). Service engineers working for the manufacturers were expected to be vague if asked by any new customers if the machines had been tested with water in the factory before delivery.

[John Rumm]

Oi, do you mind, we normally try and give the right answers! ;-)

That yours contained no water is not really conclusive. A sample size of one does not impart much information.

However since John (YAPH) installs these things routinely, I would say there is a fair chance that the information is correct.

[Martin Bonner]

If they pressure test with water at (say) 10bar, and the tank splits, there will be a splash of water around the leak.

If they pressure test with air at 10 bar, and the tank splits, they will need to be standing behind some seriously thick walls.

Much safer to use water.

[YAPH]

TBH mine's a sample size approaching one since I almost exclusively install Worcester-Bosch, and usually only one model of that make. Though of the few other makes & models I have installed I don't recall any being entirely dry.

[John Rumm]

Well I can double your sample size then; since I installed an ISAR at my last place[1]. It was "damp" rather than pouring out, but it did have a warning in the packing that it may contain water. Also each of the pipes had a plastic blanking plug in it that you had to remember to remove before putting it on its mounting frame.

[1] It was one of the few boilers that would fit the available space, and no one here had anything in particular to say about them at the time given they were fairly new.

[Harry Stottle]

The boiler seems to work OK, my only complaint is the domestic hot water 'pre heat' firing up every 40 minutes, instead of the stated approx. 90 minutes, as per the instruction book. I found this was disturbing my sleep due the frequent fire ups, so I have now fitted an additional timer, so the power is fully off to the boiler during my sleeping hours. I queried this 40 minute cycle and was told it was due to the ambient temperature of the water, and was an approx. time, but it seems to defeat the claim that the boiler is highly efficient if it is pre heating the water every 40 minutes when it is not needed, and the need for a pre heat seems a bit daft anyway, as it doesn't seem to do much, and it would only take a few more seconds for the hot water to arrive at the tap without it.

[John Rumm]

Are you sure you have not got a tap dripping somewhere? That would cause more frequent reheats.

It means you get hot water at a tap fairly quickly - rather than water that warms up to temp over 40 secs or so. So you gain some of the loss back in needing to run off less dead leg water.

Generally speaking the ISAR is pretty good with water temperature regulation - you can run a very slow trickle of hot water and it will keep approximately on temperature without any cold / hot / cold swigs that you get with many combis - some of this ability is down to its small store of hot water (the rest to its reasonably wide modulation range).

[Harry Stottle]

No leaking water problems, so it is all down to the boiler electronics. Even when the power has been turned off for a couple of hours, or even overnight, the domestic hot water still seems to fire up for the same length of time as it does on its usual 40 minutes cycle. This seems to disprove the ambient water temp excuse because if it only takes the same amount of time to heat the water up after several hours, why is it deciding to heat the water up every 40 minutes?. The inspector that came and checked the installation said that this discrepancy has been raised with him before, and the manufacturers insist that it is normal, but I am beginning to doubt this, there is a big difference between 16 cycles per day, and 36 cycles per day, but at least by using the overnight timer to turn off the boiler when I am sleeping, those 36 daily cycles should be reduced to 24.

[geoff]

In message , Harry Stottle writes

Its a dog

If the fan stalls, it takes out the driver transistors in the module, the user control can take out the control module and vice versa

I have replaced over 200 ISAR module transformers since October

They are the new Suprima

[Harry Stottle]

There does not appear to be any user controls fitted with my Ideal Isar HE

24, the only control being a Honeywell wireless stat, and my additional 'do not disturb whilst sleeping' timer, so hopefully it should be more reliable. It also comes with a 2 year guarantee, plus 2 years free servicing through the Warm Front scheme, and if any common faults appear after that, I will be asking for the faults to be repaired free of charge stating that the fault is well documented, and inherent from manufacture.