Small amount of water collecting inside boiler - weather?

monkey_alan_2

Hi guys,

I have a Worcester greenstar junior 26cdi - something like that. Anyway, a few times in this winter and last it has packed up - heating engineer came out, said it was the condensate pipe freezing, unthawed it - dried out the dampness that got inside from where the water had backed up, fired it up - all worked fine. Rinse and repeat a few times here and there.

After it happened again and i was confident I could do the same thing - the next time it happened (Start of December) - i turned off the power to the thing, took the front off, disconnected the condensate pipe from under the boiler and stuck a 2 litre jug under it - dried out the damp bits inside the boiler again, fired it up - it worked!

So now, I have the condensate draining into a jug, which I have to empty every day, obviously. Problem solved.

But no - I keep getting a tiny bit of water inside the boiler housing - there is a very slight "groove" that runs from the circular black plastic/rubber housing (Please dont laugh too much at the terminology I use ) over towards where this little electrical connection is, which I think connects the gas valve? - anyway, water gets onto that little channel/groove and eventually, the boiler safety kicks in and stops it firing.

So, I dry this out, turn it all back on and it fires again.

Back in August - the same heating engineer came out and said that because of the "sideways" driving rain, moisture had got in through the flue, into the boiler, causing the damp.

The question I have is - is this same thing happening? At night, I flick the temperature right down so that it's off for 3 or 4 hours, before coming back on in the early hours - could ice/frost form inside the flue? My kitchen is also quite cold over night - so could condensation be occuring for that reason? These problems have ONLY occurred due to weird and wonderful whether - be it rain or most common - sub-zero conditions.

Any ideas welcome - obviously now it's NOT the frozen pipe causing the problem, but there is some dampness getting into the system and it appears to be collecting at the bottom of the circular black plastic thing, which appears to come straight down from where the flue is joined to the wall.

Initially, everything was fine - but the last 2 days i've had to dry this dampness twice - it is literally just 1/4 of a teaspoon of water, hardly any, but it only takes a drop.....

One more thing - the boiler was serviced less than 4 weeks ago - everything fine and working well. I have also only had a tiny pressure drop in the last 12 months, if there was a leak, I think the pressure would have dropped by now?

Cheers

anotherbaldrick

I had a problem on my previous boiler (Potterton Condensing) in certain conditions water used to collect in the tray at the bottom of the boiler under the burner. The engineers tried for years (literally)to cure this . They dismantled and cleaned out the condensate pipe many times, they replaced the condensate trap box they tried every thing and it still kept happening. Finally after a major ruckus with the company they sent an engineer who took the top hood section off the boiler and found that the flue gaiter had been split when they had done the first service. The flue off the top of a condensing boiler is a bifurcated twin pipe, in fact a flue inside a concentric combustion air inlet duct and the rubber gaiter serves to seal both where it connects to the outlet pipe through the wall . In removing the hood and gaiter they had split it and it was allowing rainwater and condense to escape into the air inlet and drain down into the boiler casing . The water was not coming from the condensate drain at all.
They replaced the gaiter and the water ceased but not before the boiler had been ruined.
You mentioned the boiler had been serviced 4 weeks ago, did they take the flue hood off the top and disturb the gaiters/gaskets ??

monkey_alan_2

re: Taking the flu housing off etc - I seriously doubt that happened - the guy was not here long enough and I didn't see many bits being taken off. I was trying to take a bit of an interest....

All I saw him do was remove the little "cap" thing at the top, where there appears to be a removable screw-in plastic thing and stick a machine into it to take measurements - I think that was about it. He just said "everything is fine"....

Thanks for the advice - this may well be similar to what is happening. It certainly doesn't seem to happen all the time.

In the mean time and in this weather....I'll have to take the front off every couple of days and see if there's any moisture to mop up....

Not exactly ideal, such a pain...

C_Mababejive

You really need to resolve the condensate issue and try getting it re re-routed internally to prevent freezing.

As you will know,condensate is corrosive.

I have seen it secretly wetting a copper gas pipe,unseen,causing a leak and filling a house with gas.

The pipe just fell to bits where the condensate had been dripping over a period of time.

i wouldnt mind betting that there are many leaks and boiler damages due to condensate corrosion.

lynnemcf

C_Mababejive wrote: »

You really need to resolve the condensate issue and try getting it re re-routed internally to prevent freezing.

As you will know,condensate is corrosive.

I have seen it secretly wetting a copper gas pipe,unseen,causing a leak and filling a house with gas.

The pipe just fell to bits where the condensate had been dripping over a period of time.

i wouldnt mind betting that there are many leaks and boiler damages due to condensate corrosion.

I didnt know condensate is corrosive ... my condensate pipe stops about six inches from a drain in my yard, should I do something to direct it into the drain?

macman

So where does it discharge to at the moment then? if it stops 6 ins above but still falls into the drain, then that is OK, as long as it's not running down the wall. But it's still a shoddy piece of plumbing.

lynnemcf

It does run into the drain (well not at the moment, it freezes as soon as it hits the concrete). Will get it sorted ASAP.

monkey_alan_2

Condensate isn't that corrosive - it's the same PH as an orange, according to wikipedia. I don't see how that could corrode a copper pipe entirely!

Coming back to my issue... I doubt it'll be long before the manufacturers are out here to examine and fix the issue, cos it definitely is an issue....

monkey_alan_2

Thought I'd report that this has been fixed.

The small seal...thing, that sits on the bottom of the sump - was not fitted correctly, or more likely not re-fitted correctly at some point. The blind (censored) who did this will no longer be doing anything similar. It's been sealed properly now and masses of crap that looks like gravel was also removed from the condensate trap (again, should have been done before)