HELP! Boiler heats water but not house

kcmoon

Hi

Our boiler was working fine up until last week when we went away and switched everything off at the wall, then came back to a freezing house, switched everything back on again, tried firing up the heating for 1 hour and it wouldn't come on.

I tried everything from the reset button on the boiler, to switching on and off again several times at the wall but nothing would work. Eventually I figured out if I put the hot water on for 1 hour then you see/hear the boiler firing up and after a while can feel the radiators getting warm.

This trick works when the hot water hasn't recently been heated up and could do with the boiler kicking in. But like this morning, I have got up and as the hot water was already timed to come on earlier, I am freezing as I can't get the heating to work.

Any ideas? It seems like such a waste getting a gas person in for this.

latecomer

Is it a combi boiler? If so it could be the diverter valve which directs the flow to either the hot water or the heating.

If its a conventional boiler then you might have a 3 port valve which is sticking/stuck

EliteHeat

kcmoon wrote: »

Any ideas? It seems like such a waste getting a gas person in for this.

Why is it a waste? do you think that the diagosis and repair is so trivial that you don't need one?

jcorbygas

Yes, and when the fully qualified engineer comes and diagnoses/repairs the fault and it takes him 5 minutes the customer feels aggrieved when asked to pay a reasonable call out fee - before he was there the customer had no heating, now he has been, they have heating - so a service has been provided.
You can tell we are fed up with customers expecting us to provide our service for nothing at the moment can't you??

kcmoon

Sorry if my question has led to a few of you (obviously in this business) getting offended. Or maybe my simple question has raised a long standing debate that you've all been participating in that I'm not aware of (I'm a new forum user).

I merely wanted to see if I was missing a simple step that I could do by myself before bringing a professional in to diagnose the problem. I'm on the moneysavingexpert website, obviously trying to save money. I'm in a financial tight spot hence why I'm trying to save a fee.

I do have a friend who is a plumber and corgi registered, so I can ask him as he's done some work for us before. So the rates would be fair anyway.

Its just we're living in near poverty. So before you start getting on the defensive, take a little time to remind yourself of essentially what this website is all about, and that my question is posted in a place devoted to home and DIY (not get a professional in) as well as 'money saving' subjects.

Thank you to the other poster who gave me an idea of the problem being a valve. This has made me realise that I can't fix it myself and will call my friend in.

jcorbygas

You did not word your original query very well ie called it 'a waste' which is why we were not happy.
Yes, we do get offended sometimes as a lot of people (I'm sure not you included) think that all gas engineers/plumbers are rip off merchants who are not entitled to earn a reasonable wage even if they have studied for 5 years and worked in the business for over 30 years and have to re qualify every few years just to stay in the business.
Hope you manage to get your heating problem sorted out, and motorised valve problems are very common at this time of year when everybody is turning their rads on and finding that the valve has stuck.