condenstate pipe pointing upwards-cause for concern?

northernsoul

Hi
I have a Valiant ecotec plus 837. 2 weeks ago during temperatures which never rose above -4C (got an outside theremometer) for the whole week, the condenstate pipe froze and the boiler stopped working. I poured boiling water on the outside of the pipe and used a hairdrier on the pipe inside. A lot ofice and water seemed to come out. This successfully defrosted the pipe. Turning off the boiler and on did not start the flame but pressing reset did and all has been fine since. I have noticed on the 75mm ish length of pipe inside the house it is pointing upwards. By the time it goes through the wall i guess it is 25 to 50mm higher at the outside. Therefore water will collect in the pipe before draining. Should i be concerned about this? Will it harm the boiler? Is it worth trying to redrill the hole horizontal (or even downwards). The boiler was fitted in Nov08.
Thanks

keystone

Its not going to drain very well like that. I would say it needs rerouting.

Cheers

ormus

you often see a U trap in the condensate pipe internally, but not externally.

macman

The installer who did that obviously did not attend the college lesson where they teach you that water obeys gravity and will not run uphill...

27col

The clue is in the name. It is a condensate drain.

northernsoul

it does drain, but only when the pipe is full of water!

27col

It may well drain eventually but the installer quite obviously did bad job when fitting it.

heating-eng

northernsoul wrote: »

Hi
I have a Valiant ecotec plus 837. 2 weeks ago during temperatures which never rose above -4C (got an outside theremometer) for the whole week, the condenstate pipe froze and the boiler stopped working. I poured boiling water on the outside of the pipe and used a hairdrier on the pipe inside. A lot ofice and water seemed to come out. This successfully defrosted the pipe. Turning off the boiler and on did not start the flame but pressing reset did and all has been fine since. I have noticed on the 75mm ish length of pipe inside the house it is pointing upwards. By the time it goes through the wall i guess it is 25 to 50mm higher at the outside. Therefore water will collect in the pipe before draining. Should i be concerned about this? Will it harm the boiler? Is it worth trying to redrill the hole horizontal (or even downwards). The boiler was fitted in Nov08.
Thanks

we find this quite a lot and as keystone says it really does need rerouting also you may find that it is 22mm pipe and you could fit the next size up pipe 32mm and this will stop the pipe freezing ..

heating-eng

27col wrote: »

It may well drain eventually but the installer quite obviously did bad job when fitting it.

it will never drain if it falls the wrong way ..it will just hold water

27col

Quite.Which is exactly what is happening, according to the op.(Holding water)

savemoney

This was mentioned last week on radio 4 a lot of people have problems with badly fitted external pipe with condensing boilers not draining away properly and freezing