New Boiler etc Help and information on all topics relating to your central heating, air conditioning and ventilation issues.

[JimS]

Hi,
My first post, I'm not a tradesman just a house owner with some CH questions. We have had our boiler replaced, together with a new radiator and other parts by the Goverment scheme. It's been a year of nightmares.It first started 31 March 2010 and it's still not finished. Its a long story but I'll cut all that and asked a couple of questions.
1, Where would an installer put the cleaner & inhibitor, would it be in the header tank or some other way?.
2, Bonding (which I know nothing about). We have a spike at the front of the house close to the main electric meter. The boiler is at the back of the house.We were told we would have to have a wire run from the front to the boiler, which was fair enough so we made arrangements moving furniture etc. When the electrician (same person who said about the cable front to back)came to wire the boiler he changed his mind and said he would bond it some other way.How he did it I don't know.We had an inspection and the person inspecting the installation failed it, we have not been told directly by the company but we think he failed it because of the bonding. When asked by the company the electrician (sub contractor)said we refused him access to run the cable, which is rubbish.If this electrician couldn't be bothered to take up floor boards could he have not put a spike at the rear of the house?.
Jim

[plastic_man77]

@JimS

In answer to your questions,

1) If you have an active header tank, yes, the cleanser and inhibitor can be introduce at that point. It can also be introduced in other ways, including via a radiator bleed valve or a filling loop, depending on what type of system you have.

2) Cross bonding is required at the boiler. All pipework is interlinked, to disperse any local, rogue current, and allow it to track to earth as fast as possible, hopefully preventing a fatality in the process. The gas pipework should already have equipotential bonding at the gas meter- 10mm2 cable within 600mm of the outlet of the gas meter and before any branch. The cold main should also have equipotential bonding. These cables should go to earth via the consumer unit and earth spike. Then other pipework in you house, supplying bathroom furniture, utility and en-suite furniture and your boiler for instance, therefore only reqire cross-bonding.

The suggestion you made about an earth spike at the rear of your property, sounds quite feasible, but I'm not an electrician, so you would need to investigate further. It may be that the earth path for a domestic property needs to go through a common terninal at your consumer unit?

[JimS]

Further to my last post my problems with WarmFront are still going on.Since they installed the boiler in 2011 and did other CH work we have had so many problems. We have had 4 valves(don't know what the proper name is they switch between Hot Water/CH or both).we had 2 in a week, a new time switch, a new Heat Exchanger in the boiler.Under the agreement we should have had 2 services in the 2 year warranty, we had one on the 2 February 2012 but no other in the 2 years. We had a letter saying our warranty had finished on the 8 March 2013, due to ill health we forgot about contacting them. But on the 24 July 2013 WarmFront rang us to ask if the service could take place the next day, we agreed. The engineer open the boiler and there were signs of a bad leakage on the bottom of the boiler case, dry rusty water all over the place. Various bolt head were very rusty(dark rust) but the worrying thing was a earthing bolt was also very rusty. There were signs of calcium around the bottom of the heat exchanger, where the leak was.The engineer said the leak came from the heat exchanger but had stopped he thought!. He used a piece of tissue to see if any water was present and there was a small amount on the edge of the tissue, he said he thinks that it was his sweat!!.He thought it more than likely leaked when the CH was running for long periods, with that of he went. I emailed WarmFront and they said they would investigate, next day they rang confirming there had been a leak but as the boiler was working then it did not pose a threat.
I pointed out to them if they had carried out the second service in the agreed 2 year warranty then the boiler would have still been under warranty, never heard anything else. I contacted the Fuel Poverty Dept and they contacted Warmfront, I then got a letter from Warmfront saying they would investigate with the investigators name.3 days later I get another letter saying they would investigate this time with another persons name.Still waiting.