Problem with heating not coming on more than once (hot water is fine)

Andrea15

I don't know whether it was working before I changed the timer. The boiler was checked in August and I presume it was fine. I noticed that the timer wasn't working, but never checked the heating until now. The heating has not really been used since march.
There is no thermostat, so if the boiler is on it stays on. At most the valve at the radiator turns off.

[Deleted User]

You don't have a thermostat to regulate the warmth of your home, i thought that was normal ?

JGB1955

According to the link supplied earlier 
*timeSWITCH 150 needs to be bought with a Vaillant VRT 50 digital room thermostat so you can control the boiler temperature from elsewhere in your home.
Did you get one?

Le_Kirk

[Deleted User] said:

You don't have a thermostat to regulate the warmth of your home, i thought that was normal ?

JGB1955 said:

According to the link supplied earlier 
*timeSWITCH 150 needs to be bought with a Vaillant VRT 50 digital room thermostat so you can control the boiler temperature from elsewhere in your home.
Did you get one?

I suspect somewhere in here is the problem.

Andrea15

That boiler never had a thermostat, but only the dial with the pins.
Still that would explain why it would come on the first time only. It is like something is not resetting when you turn the heating off. 
On Monday I'll give Vaillant a phone and see what they say.

Le_Kirk

OK  let us know how you get on.

[Deleted User]

Andrea15 said:

That boiler never had a thermostat, but only the dial with the pins.
Still that would explain why it would come on the first time only. It is like something is not resetting when you turn the heating off. 
On Monday I'll give Vaillant a phone and see what they say.

The thermostat isn't on the boiler, if that's what you mean, it's either wall mounted - often in the hall - or one that you can move around to different locations.

Apodemus

I'm surprised to hear of a boiler "with no thermostat".  Surely all boilers have an internal thermostat to control the temperature of the circulating water - regardless of whether there is any additional thermostatic control over how it releases heat into the  building?  Is it really possible to have a boiler that simply switches on and fires continuously regardless of the circulating water temperature?  There surely needs to be some provision to enable an overheat shut-down, with possibly a subsequent need for manual re-setting? 

Andrea15

There is a way to set the temperature on the boiler for hot water and heating, but that's it; it is just on/off. Then you have the valves on the radiators. 

Apodemus

Andrea15 said:

There is a way to set the temperature on the boiler for hot water and heating, but that's it; it is just on/off. Then you have the valves on the radiators. 

But that on/off is thermostatically controlled by the boiler.  As long as the timer is set to "on", the boiler should fire, bring the water temperature up until it reaches the thermostatic max, then switch off until the water cools and reaches the thermostat minimum when it will switch on again.  Its not simply an on/off, it is thermostatically controlled. 

In all probability there is also an additional overheat cut-out (again, another thermostat) that switches the whole thing off if the boiler malfunctions and passes a temperature in excess of the maximum that it can reasonably tolerate. It would be normal for this to require a deliberate manual reset.