Apologies in advance - another boiler/thermostat thread!

tigershoes99

Hi Guys,

Sorry to burden the forum with yet another thread on the same subject as 500,000 others, but I searched and can't find any threads which answer my problem.

We have a Vokera boiler in our house. All the operational switches are on the front of the boiler which is a pain running up and downstairs all the time to switch it on and off and set it.

I quite fancied a wireless thermostat so we got a heating engineer out to fit one to our boiler, but two hours after the engineer arrives, he comes down to us and asks "Eh, was your boiler working before I started working on it?"....YES! We have never had any issues with the boiler before.
Click click, not igniting (I'm not very technically minded so there is probably more to it that this). He called the Vokera helpline, tried a few things but to no avail.
aarggghhh, so now boiler not working. He was in a rush, said his hasty goodbyes and promised to call back in the morning to see if he could fix it.

I remained calm, I didn't lose the rag at the guy and I am having him back tomorrow to try to fix this.

My issue is now that I am not sure if it is something he has done when trying to fit the thermostat which has caused the problem with the boiler?
I'm fearful that we may be landed with a hefty bill to fix the boiler, which we wouldn't have had, had he not been in about it?
Does he have an obligation to fix it now? It may have been a coincidence that the boiler broke just as he was working on it?

Has anyone had any issues with fitting wireless thermostats?

Any help appreciated

Love from a very cold Tigershoes99!

southcoastrgi

what is the model of your boiler & what is the make & model of the room stat you are having fitted, some boilers will only accept volt free or low voltage input from external controls, if he has wired the boiler with 240v & it will only accept low voltage then he could have blown the pcb

tigershoes99

Good Morning southcoastrgi,

Thanks for your quick response :-)

The boiler is a Vokera Compact 28.
The programmable room thermostat is a Siemens RDJ10RF/SET with volt free contacts 24...250v~

Do you think it is still possible with this?

tigershoes99

Update, he came back today to try to rectify this. Back on the phone to Vokera, tried some more tests, bridging and whatnot.
Now he is saying the PCB is definitely dead and the red light has come on.
He offered to get us a second hand board, but it is a dual-board from another old broken boiler he has in his garage, Our is only a single board, so doubt it will work.
We have asked him to leave and we are just going to get a Vokera engineer out to fit a new one, £200+
The guy does not inspire confidence at all.
My partner worked in electronics and feels the guy is bluffing his way through the whole thing.

We started off with a perfectly working boiler.
We hoped to have a boiler with a wireless thermostat.
Now we don't even have a boiler and we will be £200+ down for a new PCB.
And to top it all off it has started to snow outside......

:-(

gas4you

Vokera Compacts are 230v connections for external controls.

I cannot begin to think what on earth he could have done to cause this, if indeed he has, other than short something out.

kaya

its a common misconception that all "heating engineers" and "plumbers" are technicly proficient in the internal workings of boilers , the fact that somebody is gas safe registered means they are safe with gas and not a competant boiler engineer , if you want a boiler repairing you need to call a boiler engineer ! i hope you didnt pay this muppet anything and have all his details so you can reclaim any costs incurred in the repair from him, unless your happy paying for people to turn up and break stuff at your expense that is !

tigershoes99

It could just be absolute coincidence that our boiler has broken down at the same time he was working on it, but it's hard to accept such a coincidence has happened.

He probably has had people in the past with broken boilers asking him to work on their boiler then claim he broke it, so I can understand him covering his back by asking if our boiler was working beforehand.

Also, he seemed surprised when we told him the heating not marked as needing replaced on our Home report. The boiler is not very old and in the year we have lived here, it has never given us any issues. It was marked as a 1 on the Home report.

At his insistence, he is back in and upstairs with my partner just now working on it again, so hopefully we might get it back in operation.

We were perhaps hasty is asking him to leave and looking into getting Vokera out to look into this.
I don't want to think badly of him, I don't know the guy, he is just a one-man-band with a reputation to keep intact so I want to give him a chance.

tigershoes99

He wanted to try to fit his second-hand dual board into our boiler.
Partner told him he'd rather he didn't, because out boiler was only a single board to start with.
He said we could pay for a new single board and then for him to fit it.

He has left now, without any payment and taken his wireless thermostat with him.
We will get Vokera out (Their phoneline is closed today... will need to call back on Monday) and they can fit a PCB and get it working again.

We tried to look up his Gas Safe number on the Gas Safe website but it says he is not registered. We have is address and company details but not sure if I want the hassle of pursuing him for the cost of the new PCB, plus we can't prove if it was him, or coincidence that the boiler broke.

Mr_Ted

You need to pursue it if only to stop him from causing more hassle to others, and maybe killing someone if he is that inept!

But thats for your conscience, can you live with it?

tigershoes99

Mr_Ted wrote: »

You need to pursue it if only to stop him from causing more hassle to others, and maybe killing someone if he is that inept!

But thats for your conscience, can you live with it?

After the year of hell I've just had, I pick my battles wisely and my conscience is fine with that.

Mr_Ted

Sorry but thats why there are so many cowboys out there, and they rely on no one doing anything about them because they dont want to get involved!

All you have to do is report him, if you dont want retribution thats up to you, but IMO I couldnt have a fine conscience knowing he was at large to do the same or worse to anyone, no matter what the circumstances!

ACTUALLY NO I AM NOT SORRY!