I'm at a bit of a loss here and need some advice. I know they're terrible boilers, it was in when we bought the house and it's been trouble free for 5 years, it's now showing it's age and being a right pain.
As I say it's been absolutely fine up until a month ago when it stopped supplying hot water at full demand. Half-way you'd get just hot enough, the shower wasn't great, it would go hot-warm-lukewarm in a little cycle. We got someone out and he changed the diverter valve, and unfortunately it didn't make a hell of a lot of difference - the CH flow pipe gets hot when a hot tap is on but the diverter is operating, you can hear it and the display goes to 'd'. Ideal suggested it could be a blockage, so we had a power flush done, this has improved the heat coming from the radiators and the hot water at full demand was back... for a few hours! It's now worse than it was before.
Now it fires up when you turn it on, the CH (as before) works perfectly. The DHW, when it fires up and 't' is displayed - if you run a hot tap you'll get a few seconds of lovely hot water, but when it flicks over to 'd' the boiler will show that the burner is on for about a minute or so, the water goes to freezing cold and the burner light goes off. If you leave the tap open after the burner light has gone off, it'll start flashing L9 - I believe this is either a blockage or the thermistor according to the manual, but I've seen mention of it possibly relating to the pump. A little earlier I ran the hot tap and felt the CH flow pipe and it was warm, DHW outlet was very cold.
When the power flush was being done, I asked the engineer how bad the water was and he told me it was pretty clean, a lot better than he was expecting.
I spoke to the heating engineer yesterday on the phone and told him what was happening and as all things still pointed to a blockage, he recommended I contacted the power flush company as there must still be debris and they are saying that there can't be a blockage as the system was clear.
At the moment I've got it switched off as I don't know what to do.
Does anyone have any ideas what this could be? I feel a bit in the middle here, if we get someone out to clear a blockage from the heat exchanger or replace it, is it just going to block up again and we're back where we started? Could it be the diverter?
We've already spent £350 to get to this point. I'm considering just binning the thing and getting another boiler, but I don't even know what a good replacement would be. I've heard Intergas boilers are good for systems like ours as they can't block up in the same way.
Any recommendations on possible replacements and rough costs would be welcome, the evil not-Ideal is in a kitchen cupboard at the moment so wouldn't want one massively bigger.
Thanks for reading
As I say it's been absolutely fine up until a month ago when it stopped supplying hot water at full demand. Half-way you'd get just hot enough, the shower wasn't great, it would go hot-warm-lukewarm in a little cycle. We got someone out and he changed the diverter valve, and unfortunately it didn't make a hell of a lot of difference - the CH flow pipe gets hot when a hot tap is on but the diverter is operating, you can hear it and the display goes to 'd'. Ideal suggested it could be a blockage, so we had a power flush done, this has improved the heat coming from the radiators and the hot water at full demand was back... for a few hours! It's now worse than it was before.
Now it fires up when you turn it on, the CH (as before) works perfectly. The DHW, when it fires up and 't' is displayed - if you run a hot tap you'll get a few seconds of lovely hot water, but when it flicks over to 'd' the boiler will show that the burner is on for about a minute or so, the water goes to freezing cold and the burner light goes off. If you leave the tap open after the burner light has gone off, it'll start flashing L9 - I believe this is either a blockage or the thermistor according to the manual, but I've seen mention of it possibly relating to the pump. A little earlier I ran the hot tap and felt the CH flow pipe and it was warm, DHW outlet was very cold.
When the power flush was being done, I asked the engineer how bad the water was and he told me it was pretty clean, a lot better than he was expecting.
I spoke to the heating engineer yesterday on the phone and told him what was happening and as all things still pointed to a blockage, he recommended I contacted the power flush company as there must still be debris and they are saying that there can't be a blockage as the system was clear.
At the moment I've got it switched off as I don't know what to do.
Does anyone have any ideas what this could be? I feel a bit in the middle here, if we get someone out to clear a blockage from the heat exchanger or replace it, is it just going to block up again and we're back where we started? Could it be the diverter?
We've already spent £350 to get to this point. I'm considering just binning the thing and getting another boiler, but I don't even know what a good replacement would be. I've heard Intergas boilers are good for systems like ours as they can't block up in the same way.
Any recommendations on possible replacements and rough costs would be welcome, the evil not-Ideal is in a kitchen cupboard at the moment so wouldn't want one massively bigger.
Thanks for reading
it's been okay for us, but it's not the boiler you'd choose! I think I've read most of the posts on the internet about them and they don't exactly have a stellar reputation!