Water only hot when heating is on

sjoh0961

Hi Everyone.

Hoping for some advice on what might have caused this. Combi boiler has seemed fine (make is Ideal); heating the water and the central heating with no problems, nice and hot. Now we seem to be struggling to get hot water unless the central heating is turned on.

Any suggestions, please?

Tim

Mrs_Skrimper

Umm....wouldn't you be better consulting a central heating engineer rather than a random selection of non-specialists on a forum?

I have a service contract with plumbing and drains cover wth my gas supplier and it is worth every penny it costs. Quick and efficient service, polite well-trained engineers with no need to spend time finding out if they are Gas Safe Registered, priority attention if heat fails in no heat situations in bad winter weather because I'm a pensioner. and a discount on a replacement boiler should old faithful give up the ghost. What more could I ask? I'd recommend it to anyone.

sjoh0961

Mrs_Skrimper wrote: »

Umm....wouldn't you be better consulting a central heating engineer rather than a random selection of non-specialists on a forum?

I have a service contract with plumbing and drains cover wth my gas supplier and it is worth every penny it costs. Quick and efficient service, polite well-trained engineers with no need to spend time finding out if they are Gas Safe Registered, priority attention if heat fails in no heat situations in bad winter weather because I'm a pensioner. and a discount on a replacement boiler should old faithful give up the ghost. What more could I ask? I'd recommend it to anyone.

Great, thanks. This forum would be pretty sparse if everyone went straight to the professionals. Obviously I will do so, if no simple ideas solve this problem.

Any helpful suggestions would be appreciated...

jbainbridge

Sounds like the 'diverter valve' needs replacing. Someone with more experience may be able to give an approx. cost.

Kiran

Excuse my non GSR terminology and description, but there is a diverter valve which switches between supplying heating and hot water. The pin gets stuck and thats what causes the problem.

HTH

Kiran

Doh! jbainbridge beat me to it.

sjoh0961

Thanks Kiran and jbainbridge. My limited research had been throwing up that suggestion. I find it useful to have some sort of idea what the problem might be before I call someone in. I wonder whether I could sort it myself...

Tim

Kiran

Depending on the model the part is in the region of £60 published retail price, on a baxi its less than a minute to get to it taking the front cover off and I would imagine less than a half hour job to get it emptied, replaced and refilled. Now you have a fairly certain diagnosis of what the problem is, I would call a few fitters and ask them for a price. It may turn out not even worth the bother of doing it yourself.

tiggerbodhi

had the same issue and was the diverter valve, they either fail because of no electrical signal to tell them to move or the valve itself is faulty, although as Kiran says can be a straightforward change on some boilers our Baxi 105E was an hour of swearing and much gnashing of teeth for the SE Engineer to change and he fubar'd the control board in the process.

Not something any law abiding honest citezen would suggest but some have been known to get a service contract started with the shortest run in period (British Gas?) live with the issue for a couple of weeks then report it, even if they refuse to cover the parts under the contract at least you get a diagnosis from a Gas Safe engineer, just don't be conned into power flushing..

keystone

Mrs_Skrimper wrote: »

Umm....wouldn't you be better consulting a central heating engineer rather than a random selection of non-specialists on a forum?

Umm - no OP needs to consult a boiler engineer if they have a combi as the diverter valve is within.

Oh and yes No 1 suspect is the diverter valve.

Cheers

keystone

tiggerbodhi wrote: »

Not something any law abiding honest citezen would suggest but some have been known to get a service contract started with the shortest run in period live with the issue for a couple of weeks then report it..............

You're not law abiding and honest then?? :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Don't you think that they might just have thought of this wheeze and as a matter of course give the system the once over before taking it on contract?

Cheers