Ran boiler without earth connected - have I broken it?

sjs202

Hi All,

First post here, hope I have put this in the right place.

I am renovating a flat at the moment. On Saturday I did something stupid with the electrics and I think I have caused a fault with the boiler.

To cut a long story short, whilst working on the final ring circuit installing a spur, I ran the boiler without an earth connection for a while (unknowingly at the time). Once I’d finished the spur, the boiler started tripping the rcd on the consumer unit. The tripping seemed to be in time with when the boiler would try to ignite. This happened a few times until the boiler would not switch back on at all. Turned out the fuse inside the boiler had blown. Today I have replaced the fuse and tried to run the boiler. It switches on (i.e. the power light comes on and flashes) but will not fire or do anything. It seems to be in some sort of error state. Have I fried the PCB somehow by running the boiler with no earth connection? All working fine before I attempted this electrical job so I am thinking its highly likely to be related.


Thanks for any help.


Steve

Rubidium

Modern boilers need an earth for the flame detection circuitry to work correctly.

Supplying the make and model would have been useful.

I doubt if you have fired anything but it may be in a locked out state caused by this earth fault condition.

teddysmum

I would worry about the safety of your work, if you are so unsure about how the boiler works .

sjs202

Thanks Rubidium. Good point - It is a Potterton Performa 24 eco he. It does seem to be in an error or lockout state. But resetting it does no good.

Tesdysmum - I am worried. I have since learned you can't put screwed connections beneath a floor so an electrician is attending to remove the spur and make permanent joints in the ring circuit that I cut through. Like I said made stupid mistakes this week.

Rubidium

sjs202 wrote: »

Thanks Rubidium. Good point - It is a Potterton Performa 24 eco he. It does seem to be in an error or lockout state. But resetting it does no good.

When trying to reset the boiler, did you turn the selector switch fully anti-clockwise
against the spring pressure to the ‘Reset’ position and hold for at least 3 seconds?

sjs202

Yes - held the switch against the spring pressure for up to 10 seconds, tried this several times but it does not make a difference.

Rubidium

sjs202 wrote: »

Yes - held the switch against the spring pressure for up to 10 seconds, tried this several times but it does not make a difference.

Are you 100% certain that you have not transposed the live and neutral? It will appear to work normally but flame detection will fail, causing a fault lockout condition.

Get your sparks to thoroughly check it out, as it was working correctly before your rewire.

sjs202

That was checked and all ok.

An electrician attended and there was no problem with the spur I had done technically. But was against regulations and so was removed and the line of ring main replaced.

There was no problem with the earth connection to the boiler all along. It was a complete fluke that the boiler started playing up whilst I was working on wiring elsewhere. No thing I did would have affected it.

So the boiler has developed an internal fault of some sort. If I can't sort it with some simple electrical tests then an engineer will be called.