No hot water I am completely lost of who to call

petra.lockton

Hi there, as my utter desperation I though I will post my issue here, perhaps someone already experienced something similar and can direct me to the right person.
Christmas is upon us and instead of dealing with festivities, I am trying to self learn about boilers.:A

WE have a 10 years old Vaillant Ecotech Plus 824 boiler. About 3 weeks ago we noticed that when we are in the shower the hot water tends to turn cold after about a few minutes (it was enough hot water to get soap all over yourself but as you try to wash it of, the water was already cool.)

I got in touch with our home emergency insurer and they sent a guy out to fix it.
He visited us several times and changed the following:
1. Diverter valve
2. Flow change switch
3 Plate heat exchanger (after he changed this, he experienced leaking inside the boiler and had to shut off the boiler completely leaving us without heating for a few days)
4. Flow return pipe (which stopped the leaking)

After all of that, but we still do not have hot water. (our insurance cover of £1000 now run out completely and the insurer just sent me a text saying that my claim is now closed as the situation stabilised by the engineer. :mad:

Before he left the engineer suggested that it might be something wrong with the mixer taps and that the boiler now working.

In the kitchen we changed the tap about 5 months ago, yesterday I managed put the tap in a particular position I was able to have hot water for 5 min+ . I tried the method again and it was not working today.

Upstairs in the bathroom the sink taps (separate hot and cold) are temperamental in terms of pressure. E.g If we flush the toilet, the flow is very low until the toilet tank filled completely.
In the bath we have a mixer tap, but again no hot water. (never experienced any problem there)

Could it really be the tap? or something still wrong with the boiler. (I have received now quotes to get a new boiler, but the engineer specifically said that he "cant say that we need a new boiler because it might be the taps" )
Thank you so much for your input :T

Murmansk

If you go to "ultimatehandyman" forums there's a sub-forum on central heating and boilers. Lots of experts in plumbing answer questions on there, so if you post your question there you might get an answer that's very well informed

SandraX

Dear OP

Register with Screwfix forums - very good and quick.

Goodluck

SandraX

Btw, also try Mybuilder, but not as good as Screwfix.

Norman_Castle

Upstairs in the bathroom the sink taps (separate hot and cold) are temperamental in terms of pressure. E.g If we flush the toilet, the flow is very low until the toilet tank filled completely.

Do you have consistent hot water at the separate sink taps? Having mixer taps elsewhere wouldn't affect the water temperature of the separate sink taps. Its also highly unlikely multiple mixer taps would fail at the same time. Work out which pipe from the boiler feeds the hot taps. Is it hot when there is no hot water at the taps? Is the person who has used up the £1000 insurance cover blaming the taps as he's failed to fix the problem?

onomatopoeia99

Primary heat exchanger clogged meaning too much temperature difference between feed and return pipes?


When you run the hot water full on do you get "kettling" noises from the boiler?

SandraX

Looks as though the OP is sorted as no response.

onomatopoeia99

petra.lockton wrote: »

Upstairs in the bathroom the sink taps (separate hot and cold) are temperamental in terms of pressure. E.g If we flush the toilet, the flow is very low until the toilet tank filled completely.

This is expected - you have no water tanks with a combi, so the boiler is heating hot water from the incoming main supply and the toilet tank is being filled from the incoming main supply at the same time. Consequently both get reduced flow.

petra.lockton

No the issue is still persist

Yes the £1000 used up now completely.

We have 2 mixer taps (one in the kitchen and one in the bathtub) the sink taps are separate hot and cold taps. But the hot water is cutting out in all 3 places. (at different rate, if I play with the taps but eventually all turns warm and then cold)

I will post my question on all suggested sites.

I am just a bit angry that a lot of parts were changed until now we have no more cover but the issue still not solved.

Thank you for everyone's input so far, keep it coming :T

petra.lockton

It does. I mean the boiler turns on, and I can hear a very similar noise. But it does not sound unusual to me ... It is same when the heating turning on

petra.lockton

He was here 4 or 5 times but yes, it feels to me as well. He could not work out what is wrong, so it is now blamed on the taps. I did question him, because I am sceptical that one tap would cause all of them to fail, and I find it very unlikely that both taps fails at the same time...