Well the damn boiler has locked out yet again, before i call out an engineer again, i had a good poke around insdie the boiler (have previoously opened up to thoroughly clean inside).
Well i noticed one thing, the water pipe at the left hand side at the front has two sets of wires going to small cylndrical sections attached to the water pipe. the bottom set has the wires affixed into blocks that push onto tabs on the cylindrical gizmo. the top set are connected to a doodah which looks like a probe on the end that slots inside the top cylinder section, this is covered in a white paste which i am guessing is a thermal conducting paste. I can only imagine that these must be monitoring the temperature. The point of this is the top attachment is quite loose, and i am guessing making a bad connection.
Looking for the best thing to do here, i have thermal transfer compound (for cpu to heatsink), i was going to smother the probe in paste push in as far as it will go and pump silicone in behind it which when it goes off should hold it firmly in place. Or should i try to source a replacement part that may fir in snugly ? or do something completely different.....
Plumber, funnily enough did not leave the manual, just the thickies 1 page leaflet, basically saying for anything at all call out a plumber/potterton engineer. Also had a hunt around on the internet for a manual with no joy
Otherwise i would be in full faculty of the facts and not such a dumb ass question :|
Will check resistance, any ideas on what impedance it should have ?
yep i am just trying a few cheap options first ....
Top device is the temperature thermister.......thermostat if you like. Bottom one is the overheat thermostat. By all means look for loose connections but really you need to add a little more info:
Will the boiler run after you have reset it? When does it lockout?........on start up.......when up to temp.......other? Try and find a pattern.
I have one of these boilers. I didn't have the manual either. I contacted potterton who sent out the complete documentation pack for no charge. Crap boiler but reasonable customer service - in my experience.
OK, well i'll try my best to give a full picture.....
boiler started going from very intermittent lockouts to a very regular occurence over a period of several months, had been asking an acquaintence (corgi reg/plumber) to come around to have a look - the original installer being very ill with asbestosis, anyway he still hasn't come around after about 10 months.
Things i have tried,
Bled all the radiators, no air at all.
increased air flow around boiler
just after the central heating was installed, my partner chopped in the cable that was previously left hanging. having not covered the room thermostat she managed to get a lot of plaster and debris into the thermostat; i meticulously cleaned this straight after. I changed this incase a very poor electrical contact was causing trouble
completely turned off the hot water function, to see if it was the hot water coming on off at different times that was causing the problems, it wasn't (or rather wasn't exclusively - i haven;t tried just hot water running with no central heating) as the lockouts occurred just as frequently
turned the timer to continuous, to see whether it was the cycling that was casuing lockoiuts, nope, just the same frequency of lockouts.
I finally managed to get the original fitter to come around (although due to his illness i was led to believe he had long since stopped work), had a quick look around and found that someone had partially closed the bathroom radiator - the heatsink for the boiler; i know this wasn;t me as it is the heatsink and should be left on full. He then proceeded to fully open all radiators, which had taken me a long time to balance up. Thought he had fixed it - nope very next day lockouts resumed.
the lockouts have no set pattern as such, but when the system was not on continuous, it appeared to lockout on firing up, but it may well have lockout the previous evening and you only feel the cold first thing in the morning. However, a reset would work first time and the boiller would continue for a long time before next lockout. SO ther appears no obvious pattern. Short of having a webcam aimed at it permanently to see when exactly it lockouts each time i don't know what to do.
I have injected a small tube of thermal transfer paste as supplied with my zalman heatsink into the temperature thermister opening and thoroughly coated the probe, am awaiting my next lockout.
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