Hot Water and Heater Advice

westwing2505

Hi,

I have a problem with my heating system and I am not sure what to do. Basically I have to turn on the hot water and the heater controls to get the radiators to work but I can not turn on the heater controls by themselves in order to warm the radiators. So I can independently turn on and off the hot water....but for the heater, I have to have the hot water on before I can operate the heater controls. I recently got my tank fitted. Now when I click on the heater control, I can hear some clicker switch turning a valve or something but the pump doesn’t turn on nor the back boiler. It seems the hot water switch can only do that. I have an Ariston Classico 150 connected to an Baxi Bermuda LFE. So does it mean the boiler controls have been set up incorrectly that it doesn’t turn on the boiler for the heater controls or is a piping issue?

Secondly, living on a second floor flat, I don’t have a flu pipe for the boiler. The back boiler is attached to some recess in the wall which I assume has ventilation in there. My question is can I replace my back boiler to something more modern?

Any response is appreciated.

Regards

nick74

This "problem" sounds normal to me. My parents had a Glow Worm boiler and heating system installed in the mid 80's and it was designed to do exactly what yours is doing, ie the hot water can be used independently of the heating, but not vice-versa. They could be quite misleading as the controls looked as though you could set the heating on without hot water. However if you tried this nothing would happen, as you've discovered!
Not a fault, just the way some systems were designed back then. I think the reason was that they often utilised the hot water system as the "bypass", therefore the heating couldn't work without it.

If you wanted I suspect you could have the pipework modified and a second motorised valve added so you could use the heating independently of the hot water.

westwing2505

Quite normal...Well, that’s fair enough. But surely this is really inefficient way of heating up the flat (and expensive)? How much do you think it costs to put another motor on etc? Quite surprised. What worries me in that it may damage the tank and I have no idea how to tell what temperature the tank thermostat has been set at. All the thermostat has is a triangle that gets bigger that indicts higher temperature. So basically a lot more work then I originally thought. Not sure if it was like this before the tank change though. Cheers.

nick74

If you think it may not have been set up like this before, then its starting to sound like the tank change has been bodged in some way. With the type of setup I described you wouldn't normally have a tank thermostat at all. Does this actually appear to do anything, ie does turning it right down till it clicks off cause the boiler to shut down when the water heating is on?

I wonder if the wiring from the tank stat to the controller has been connected up correctly?

I would certainly get in touch with whoever replaced your tank and ask them if this is how its supposed to be set up.

westwing2505

Indeed, when I turn down the tank thermostat ( I think to the off position), it clicks off when the gas heating for the hot water is on. I’m just not sure how it was before. I suppose I do have to call the guys back but I know they will say they connected up correctly. Anyway, thanks for the advice.