I'm back! :-) and in need of OT boiler help... :-/

[guest18]

Hello all, back from Southern climes I have found that not only have we been snowed in (hurrah!), but that the boiler isn't lighting (booo!)
Anyone know anything about Protherm 60-80ci central heating boilers? It seems I have two led "fault" lights lit (lights one and two) and the pilot/boiler is not therefore lighting.

Yours with thermals on... S

[tj63]

A mate of mine had a fault with his boiler over the weekend, and it turned out to be the condensate pipe was frozen up and full of water/ice.

Might be worth a look.


Trevor

[Steffan]

Buy a wood burner - more reliable

[guest18]

Buy a wood burner - more reliable

Real fire is always better, but the advice isn't immediately helpful  also tricky in a modern house with no chimney 

Thanks for the pointer Trev, will try dropping boiling water on it from above   

[Mark]

Buy a wood burner - more reliable

Does this mean you have picked up your firepit from the Venison Center.

[guest18]

Ahh firepits, yup I have one of those, very good but not so great for heating a house...

Heating blokey has just been, seems the fan on top of the boiler had jammed for no obvious reason  poked with a screwdriver and drowned in WD40 and we have heating again  pussycat is most impressed 

[guest7]

On a related theme, I've been pondering of late the fact that I have a boiler burning gas, a finite resource (I may be wrong on that), pumping hot water all around my house in pipes to heavy radiators.

Every time my boiler fails (and you can expect it to go within ten years) it costs me nearly a grand to replace. That's £100 a year in equipment costs alone.

Surely wall-mounted electric heaters must be getting close to being as cheap to run as a gas-fired central heating boiler system? Does anyone have any experience of this or knowledge about the relative running costs?


GC

[johnr]

they still use electricity, which is more expensive than gas and not likely to be getting cheaper, and have you many electrical appliances that last more than 10 years also? people are approaching the whole heating question from the wrong angle. its not a matter of how you put heat into a house. its more a case of how you keep the heat in there once you have it. serious quantitys of  insulation will not only keep the place warm in the winter, but also keep it cool in the summer. ventilation technoligy will now allow you to supply fresh air into a house that is heated by the warm air being extracted at the same time, so no cold draughts. solar thermal is probably the future of domestic heating. but using a huge thermal store, a cylinder than will hold probably a 1000 litres and upwards. this is very reliable and cheap heating, even in the coldest weather, but will only work if installed in a well insulated house.
groundsource and airsource heatpumps are sill just a sideshow. too much to go wrong, to difficult and expensive to fix, and expensive to fit. my money is going on solar thermal hot water, and in the future on a solar thermal heatstore.

[guest7]

Oh for sure insulation is essential, especially if you live in a stone-built Edwardian semi like mine. Last Saturday I took advantage of a B&Q offer on top-up insulation (200mm) and bought ten lots for £30 (there are actually 3 rolls in each wrapping). This was more than enough to cover all of the existing insulation in my lofts.

The upshot? since then we have been 2 degrees down on the thermostat for the same comfort level, all for £30.

I have also been using thermally backed plasterboard (30mm of backing) on the outside walls of the latest room I'm renovating and the results are so good that I'm thinking of revisiting some of the rooms I have already renovated and adding it to their outside walls. A stone wall is a cold-sink in a house like mine and soaks away temperature like nobody's business.

GC

[guest7]

...and in the future on a solar thermal heatstore.

Is this the sort of system you mean?: http://www.viridiansolar.co.uk/Technology_10_Solar_for_Space_Heating.htm


Interesting stuff, but all of the articles I've just read say that a back-up boiler is required to take over when the solar input is low. I suppose the good thing is that hot water is coming from the rising main so no need for header tanks and all that bollocks, also the tank can be situated at ground level, perhaps even in an external purpose-built ultra-insulated boiler 'room'.

Being a simpleton I'm having trouble understanding how the heat store can keep pace with a circulated flow and return for heating, given the temperature drop incurred in the process (especially on start-up). Is that where the bongo size of the store comes in?

What about low levels of use of hot water and heating, how can you scale back on the store's energy demand? If you ended up having to supplement the solar input for (say) 30% of the heating and the store has to be kept up to temperature constantly then would it prove inefficient? That's where a modern combi with pilotless ignition scores... when it's not in use it's only burning the energy required to light the standby bulb.

I dread to think what the costs are like for an early adopter of such a system 

All good stuff though

GC

[Mark]

The upshot? since then we have been 2 degrees down on the thermostat for the same comfort level.

GC

Surely if you do this the house will be 2 degrees colder whereas if you left the thermostat where it was it'd be just as warm but the heating just won't be on as often.

[Steffan]

Does this mean you have picked up your firepit from the Venison Center.

Yes and I took it around to the blacksmith yesterday and he is going to make me a grill attachment for it. Pick it up in January.

Steffan

[guest7]

Surely if you do this the house will be 2 degrees colder whereas if you left the thermostat where it was it'd be just as warm but the heating just won't be on as often.

If only it was as simple as that  

It's all about heat retention and thermostat location. Previously the room the stat is in could get up to 16 degrees well enough, but the rest of the house wasn't comfortable, Consequently we set it at 18 degrees to keep the overall house temperature up*. Now, at 16 degrees on the stat the whole house is warm. Frankly I'm amazed at the difference it's made, especially as we have had a couple of -5 nights.

Somewhat scarily my heating struggled to get the house up to more then 21 degrees in the past because of the heat loss through the loft and cold stone walls. I'd never set the heating so high you understand, but Mrs Onepot "feels the cold"  

Here's a question for you all, what temperature do you set your stat to for a comfy night in?

GC

* I have played with the individual Thermostatic valves to even out this disparity, but it didn't make much difference.

[Mark]

Here's a question for you all, what temperature do you set your stat to for a comfy night in?

GC

No thermostat. Sit on the logburner in the winter. Sit in the conservatory in the summer.

[johnr]

cavity insulation is well worth it on a terrace, it really makes a difference to the feeling inside he house, ditto consider trv's on your radiators, you can then switch off the rooms you arent using. one of the biggest differences we found was he use of a full length curtain behind the front door. its amazing how much heat it retains. i'll go through all the heatstore stuff over the weekend when im not so bloody knackered!!