Valliant Turbomax Plus 828E - Fault Code Intermittent F.22 (Fix)

Jan 08, 2019 Last reply: 7 years ago 3 Replies

My trusty boiler that received a massive overhaul just 12 months ago with pretty much everything but the fan and PCB being replaced started playing up with F.22 (low system water pressure) leaving us with a cold shop to come into. A quick press of the "flame" button and it would fire up. Sometimes to stay on quite some hours and sometimes to stop a short while later with the same code. Everything on-line says it's a simple matter of topping up the system water pressure but the water pressure was always fine... So lots more digging and the only reference I could find was a chap being extremely cagey and saying it was a "gas" issue and needed a "gas engineer" to sort out.



Reading between the lines this was a "regulation" of the site/forum that no-one could discuss the gas-side of boiler repairs. A brief hint of replacing NTC sensors slipped out though. <lightbulb>



2 days later for the princely sum of £11.07 I had 3 x Thermistor NTC Sensors (252805) for my boiler.

Last night I entered the burner box (3 spring clips) and spied an NTC (sensor with a spade connector) on each side of the main heat exchanger. Both were only finger tight and against expectations no water came out when they were removed.



Screwed in the replacements, put the burner box back together and fired it up. This morning we came into a lovely warm shop and the boiler's been running without a hitch.



Only really posting this story as it was a bastard to find the right answer and the fault code is a bit of a red herring. Original Valiant part would have been £20 per sensor!



Now I'm just waiting for the "Gas Safe police" to cart me off for tampering with a gas appliance without a certificate of competence.



This is where common sense and jobsworth clash of course. Where you went is kind of a grey area, is it electrics, plumbing or gas, well its all of them depending on what you found of course and as long as nothing bodgy was done common sense would suggest that you really do not need a specialist, just somebody with common sense and the time to take to find the culprit. Brian

+1, I forget the numbers for the moment but they are on the web. If you now have a spare good one and two suspect, I would certainly test cold and in hot water before throwing the old ones away. Could well be loose connections.

The "forum" in question considered direct access into the room-sealed burner box all formed part of the gas side which I suppose it does in a way being the combustion chamber.

I hadn't de-pressurised the system, just isolated the boiler via the 2 service valves. The NTCs were fited into the flow and return pipes from the H.E. but there wasn't any trace of water. All very strange. You can see the NTC's and flow/return pipes on the following:

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looks like a straight copper pipe.

Replacement NTCs had fibre washers but I'm guessing given the absence of water and the fact they were both only finger tight would point to an inner sleeve in the pipes; perhaps having an air space might stop an initially large temperature difference between flow and return. Still no idea as to why this would be hooked up to F.22 low water pressure fault rather than something more meaningful.

Just found a full-blown service manual on-line which is a bonus. :)

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