Hot water cylinder faulty?

captainkev76

We have a Heatrae Sadia Megaflo unvented indirect hot water tank with a conventional boiler. Recently we've noticed that one of the showers in the house has very inconsistent hot water flow. It sometimes works fine but other times the hot water flow is a trickle. The hot water flow to the other showers may be slightly reduced too but not sure if we're just imaging that. I replaced the shower mixer in the problematic shower, which seemed to help the issue for a week or so but now it's back.

When our boiler was getting serviced last week I mentioned it to the engineer and he immediately asked if the hot water cylinder was a Megaflo. I went and checked and sure enough it was. He said there's a common fault with them in which some plastic on the inside breaks off or crumbles, blocking the outlet pipes. He suggested I call Heatrae Sadia to get a warranty repair.

I've just phoned them and they seem to want to charge me half a k for a repair, even though the internals of the cyclinder are supposed to have a 30 year warranty. Just wondering if anyone has any experience of this fault on these cylinders, and if so do I really need to pay £450 for a warranty repair?

Kevin

Reed_Richards

And presumably the warranty repair would only cover your cylinder and not the bit of plastic that is blocking the flow to your shower?  it might help if you could flush out this plastic so you had proof that the problem originates with your Megaflow cylinder.

Rodders53

Have you had the Megaflo serviced annually, with evidence of same, as per the warranty requirement? 

The cylinder is likely to be supplied to fix the fault but the work to replace (remove old, fit new) will not be covered,?  Based on threads on a diy.not forum where the baffle issue is known about (since early 2019).  One had not serviced and was being quoted more than that £450 from an independent plumber to swap, flush HW system etc.,.) back then... 

captainkev76

Yeah we should have the service history somewhere. If the guy I spoke to at heatrae had been clearer about what the charges were for such as those ideas above it would have been easier to make an informed decision, but to be told "it's 450" with no mention of removing the blockage or any other work needed or what was included or not included isn't especially helpful.

I've pinged a message to the customer relations team to ask them to clarify.

dagaffman

Hi Captiankev76…. Can I ask how you got on with this in the end?

I’ve been getting the blocked taps/showers etc, and suspect the the crumbly crystals responsible are the baffle breaking down (after 3 plumber visits and some internet research).

I started the process today with customer services. They sold me a monthly plan in order to get their Baxi engineer out to have a look. Apparently I get the cost of the plan back if it is a warranty issue/replacement cylinder. But when I asked about who would cover the cost of the fitting and flushing the pipes out, they said that would be down to me. Doesn’t seem right!!!

RSi

We have had exactly the same problem with the Megaflow. Changed all the taps in the house, and showers twice before we found the problem, and Megaflow don't want anything to do with it. We now have the additional external tank too.