Hot Water Issue

balloo1982

We are having intermittent hot water issue because secondary heat exchanger gets clogged with some debris every now and then.

Engineer who came to fix this issue he replaced the secondary heat exchanger and suggested power flush and magna clean filter. We have done both and spend more than £700 so far hoping issue will be fixed.

But seems this issue keep happening as soon as we turn on central heating. Second time when the guy came in he said it must be because some debris would have been in the system and as he replaced the secondary heat exchanger recently he won't replace it again and just cleaned with some chemical, which fixed the issue for a short time.

But after using our heating for few days we are having the same issue again.

Our radiators are definitely old but they don't make any noise so not sure what might be the issue. Last time when the engineer came he said this can be because of the old radiators or pipes themselves.

Now I'm clueless because I have spend a lot of money by now and hot water issue is still there.

I might swallow the bitter pill and replace all the radiators but what if this is due to the pipes then money I'll spend on new radiators and labour will be wasted and will not solve the issue.

Has anyone been in the similar situation or thoughts what should be done because I'm completely clueless now?

Thank you.

balloo1982

Any help/suggestion on this will be highly appreciated.

Thank you.

macman

Make and model would help. But your first call should be to the RGI who did the unsatisfactory repair.

balloo1982

Sorry for missing out the vital info: boiler is Worcester GreenStart 24 i Junior.

alan.t

have you checked over the system filter(magna clean) to see how much debris there is in the system?

southcoastrgi

You would have been better putting the £700 towards a new boiler WB junior are crap

balloo1982

alan.t wrote: »

have you checked over the system filter(magna clean) to see how much debris there is in the system?

Yes, I have checked the Magna clean couple of times and water is really mucky/sludgy but not much stuff actually stuck on the filter.

Last time when engineer cleaned the secondary heat exchanger I got my hands on some of the debris and when I moved fridge magnet near that they were not attracted/sticking on the magnet.

So I'm not sure what sort of those debris were and from where they are coming. To be honest, I'm not really sure whether this magna clean filter is helping or not.

balloo1982

southcoastrgi wrote: »

You would have been better putting the £700 towards a new boiler WB junior are crap

This occur to me as well but first we need to establish where the problem is.

I have spend a lot money so far without luck. If I replace my boiler at this point I'll be spending around £1500-2000 but if this issue is because of the radiators/pipes then I'll be in the same situation with the new boiler. Any suggestion on how can we identify the real issue here??

macman

I repeat, the repair has only lasted a few days, so get the RGI back in at his expense and get him to do a proper fault finding on it.

balloo1982

Thank you very much for all the replies and sorry to open the old thread.

So the same engineer came out again few days ago but unfortunately nothing much has changed, he's still insisting that it must be radiators or pipes (even though not much has been captured by magna clean filter) so you should replace your radiators with the hope that this will fix the issue.

I had another engineer this morning and he's opinion, based on his experience and seen very similar problem recently somewhere else, is to replace the boiler rather than radiators. He was saying looks like your primary heat exchanger is clogged which causes your secondary heat exchanger to be clogged and that's why this issue keeps coming. Replacing radiators might be waste of money.

Now I don't understand how boiler works, what's the role of primary and secondary heat exchanger and why water issue happens only after we use CH otherwise we get hot water.

I'm completely lost and don't know what should I do, probably just go ahead and replace the boiler with the hope that it will fix the issue?

Any help or advice might be really helpful.

Thank you.

southcoastrgi

macman wrote: »

I repeat, the repair has only lasted a few days, so get the RGI back in at his expense and get him to do a proper fault finding on it.

As above, you have paid for a powerflush, the water should be clear get him back to do the job properly