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Woke up to a cold house this morning and no central heating or hot water. Boiler is a Worcester 25cdi and does not appear to be igniting. The hot water red light is flashing slowly and the hot water one is now a solid red. Pressure is fine.
Tried turning it off and on, swearing and threatening violence- any other ideas?
Ring a gas engineer?
Could be any number of issues, some Worcester boilers are prone to fan failures that will stop both sides working.
Is the condensor outlet pipe frozen?
Very common problem in cold weather. Warm it up with a hair dryer or something.
Cheer all, looking for engineer
Worth checking the condensate pipe if you can while you wait.
Reset button top LHS of unit?
Presure OK on the rads side ?
Is there deffo gas to the property?
We know theres electrickery as the fail lights are on
NOt cold enough darn south for condense pipe to freeze , but worth investigating if below zero overnight
Fan unit fail wont cause a total stop. If you switch it off at the mains then restart it wwill try the fan for a purge , then will lockout as the APS will say 'NON'
You can test the APS by discontecting the butyl rubber hoses and blowing gently, should be a soft click, or you can trick the boiler into firing , but do not run it as you have incorrect airflow, but it will get pat APS failure
Then its gas pressure check, then gas train opening 'clickety click'.
Then sparks from the elctrode ( you can see through the window usually )
Then whoooph fire and brimstone inside the Combustion chamber
Love my little old Baxi Solo we've had since the house was new 23 years ago. Easy to diagnose issues, and so much easier with the internet now. Only major issue was a new circuit board over 10 years ago.
Recently, ours wasn't igniting properly - the clickety click was taking longer, then the electrode clicks were slow, then stopped. Turned out all I needed to do was clean the earth and injector - cover off job, but a 5 minute job (emery paper/electrical contact cleaner), then hoovered out any rubbish in the combustion chamber. So easy to service.
Last problem we had with ours (also a CDi, sounds like a mid range 90's Vauxhall) was the tundish that the condenser pipe drains from was clogged with silt, and the high level of that tripped it out.
You get to it by taking off the main cover then flipping down the control panel. Sort of a squarish translucent bottle, it was a bit of a fiddle for the engineer to get it out, but it's not in the gas system so you should be OK removing and flushing it.
If you take the front cover off you're technically working in the gas system. Do not do this.
We had the same problem with the little bottle silting up. It's not easy getting it out, I'm surprised they didn't think of that when they designed it. And that silt was like rock, very hard to scrape out.
"If you take the front cover off you’re technically working in the gas system. Do not do this"
Go on produce a quote that states this.
Technically on a modern boiler the front cover seals the unit so in the case of gases escaping they are contained within the boiler enclosure. Old boilers used to be porous pulling air for combustion from the room, new ones pull in the air through the flue. Therefore correct fitting of the cover is important to ensure the integrity of the flue system. That said I've removed our front cover several times and been careful to refit it snugly. I also have a CO detector in the same room if there is any leakage, so far no issues.
The front cover is literally two screws at the bottom and a clip at the top. I've taken ours off a few times. I think I'm competent enough to tighten two screws up! I've also taken the condensate out and given it a clean. As mentioned above it can fill up with grit so worth a try.
On another note ours recently started leaking from the pressure gauge. Bought a replacement gauge at the local plumbers merchant and managed to replace it myself. Took all of 10 minutes including a brew and it didn't kill me. To be fair I wouldn't touch the gas side of the boiler (top half) but the water and electric side is pretty maintenance friendly as long as you have a bit of common sense.
One advantage with Worcester is they have dedicated maintenence engineers and do an expensive but fixed prioce repair. I used to have a Worcester biler and used this service a couple of times - its a bit of a gamble but they guy will come out quickly and have allthe parts to fix it in his van - and will do whtever it takes to fix it for that fee.
Thanks all. TJ we had the Worcester guy out a few years back, he messed around and then said the boiler needed to reset, refill, so he would be back in an hour after another job. He left turned his phone off and Worcester couldn’t get hold of him - needless to say he hadn’t fixed it. Worcester acted like I was at fault- won’t use them again
very differnt to my experience. I would try them again myself.
One thing you might want to consider is that your non-return valve on the fan might be sticking. All it is is a rubber flap but they tend to stick in CDis. The way round it is to get your gas engineer to make the "run on time" for the fan as long as is possible. I had major problems with this for a year or so after our boiler was fitted but, after the last replacement of the flap and setting the run on time to be as long as possible, we've not had any problems (touch wood obviously).
Saying all that, this isn't something you should be fixing yourself.