Hi
I am getting desperate 8/
The 70s gloworm boiler in my kitchen broke shortly after I moved into my new house from a broken pressure chamber. It had a tank upstairs. I opted to get a combi boiler installed (Sime Format C 80) to save space by removing the tank and save money on the gas. The sytem was flushed at the time the boiler was installed and a chemical was added to help with the flow of the water. This was Jan 05.
It has never worked properly since it was installed. The installation man is not interested in sorting it out, telling me I need to ring the Sime engineer. The Sime engineer has been out to look at it and found that wire mesh, cylindrical filter on water entering the boiler was clogged with black bits so the boiler couldnt tell when the water was on or off. He rinsed the filter under the tap and put it back in. The boiler seemed to work ok for about 2 days. He said I should get the system flushed again. He explained this boiler has a filter to stop the bits entering the boiler and breaking it. I would rather have a boiler that works for a couple of years and then breaks than a boiler that never works because the filter is permanently clogged 8)
I explained the above to a few plumbers and asked if they could quote for flushing the system. They didnt seem to want to do teh job. Is this a lowly job or one that doesnt cost very much to do? Will flushing/power flushing the system clean it or just mean that the boiler clogs after a couple of weeks rather than 2 days?
The boiler has a green led when working normally. The central heating starts about 70% of the time. When it doesn't you still here a fan noise but never get to the stage where you hear the clicking and a gas flame appear in teh little window and the green light starts flashing orange.(this means insufficient pressure according to the manual). The pressure indictor drops from about 2 to 1.25 each time the boiler attempts to start and then slowly creeps back up as the boiler warms up.
If I turn the hot water tap on when the boiler is cold, the gas comes on most of the time and heats the water up for the first 10 seconds, then there is a boiling bubbling sound from teh boiler and the gas cuts out. It then wont light again for a while.
If I turn the hot water on when the central heating has been on for a long time I normally get a few minutes of hot water before the gas cuts out.
My years warrenty runs on in January so I would like the get the system flushed so that if it doesnt change I can go back to teh Sime engineer. Can anyone give me some advice? Know a plumber willing to flush central heating systems in teh Leeds/Bradford area 8) ?