Ideal Response 120 - Heat Exchanger

[jamesemmett]

Hi my Ideal Response 120 (about 6 years old) has started to leak inside the heat exchanger.

Ideal will sell me a new heat exchanger for =A3272 but i wondered if this will be a short or long-term fix?

Cheers

[cynic]

Does that include all the other bits required such as seals, refractories etc? At the end of the day you would have a new heat exchanger in an old boiler. There would be a lot less work involved in replacing the boiler than the stripdown, rebuild and replace so do your sums. Bear in mind a new boiler will have a warranty

[Ed Sirett]

Reapiring an Ideal response will restore the boiler to one with a very short life expentancy. However if you go that route do everything you can to get the return water temperature as high as possible.

[Doctor Drivel]

I know of a few Responses that are quite old and have never missed beat. But they do have the temperature set high for the rads. The problem with non-condensing boilers is that for them to work properly, the return temperature has to be above 60C, which means the rad temps are too high for many people, so they lower the setting and cause internal problems. Fit a blending valve between the flow and return to ensure 60C is being returned. But this valve will not be cheap either. Parts may be over £400 in total. May as well consider a new high flowrate condensing combi boiler which will use less gas too, although the Response is a reasonably economical boiler.

[Ed Sirett]

The problem is worse with the Response because there is little excess air passing through the boiler due the use of a forced pre-mix burner. Thus the flue gasses are wetter than with most non-condensing boilers.

[Doctor Drivel]

Yep. The rad temp settings on the Response must be on maximum. Yep I have seen plumes coming out of Response flues.