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Discuss Heating/Hot Water Issue - Unknown problem! in the Plumbing Jobs | The Job-board area at PlumbersForums.net

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Hi,

Almost last resort to call out an engineer, but as it’s so close to Christmas I doubt anything will be done until the New Year.

Apologies for the long post in advance, I’m sure the more info is given helps with responses and means less questions needs to be asked!?

We have a 3 bedroom house, with a Vaillant Ecotec 618 system boiler, hot water cylinder installed around 3 years ago. We had 2 wireless stats, one for downstairs and one for upstairs, and we have a hot water controller.

We’ve recently had some renovation works done and replaced all radiators (6) on the ground floor. The downstairs wireless stat was decommissioned, and the relay box was removed, we replaced it with a fixed controller downstairs.

Since the work has been done, we’ve noticed that the water is barely hot enough to get two showers out of it in the morning. Heating during the day/evening, not much an issue if it’s a relatively warm day.

On really cold days, the radiators can’t get raging hot, they’re a very steady ‘warm’ temperature and we run out of hot water for showers in the morning by the 2nd one, even though the hot water controller has told the boiler to heat the hot water 3 hours prior to having a shower, so there should be enough hot water after 3 hours of boiler heating it.

We don’t have a stat on the hot water controller, but have one attached to the front of the cylinder, which is also linked to the immersion I believe. I’ve turned this up twice, from 50 to 60 and then from 60 to 70 degrees, this hasn’t had an effect.

The boiler never shows the tap symbol, even though the hot water controller is on and is supposed to be telling the boiler to sort some hot water for us.

Boiler is at around 2.2 bar pressure.

The boiler, when fired up is always showing a flashing radiator/gate symbol.

This morning at 5am I checked that the boiler was fired up when the hot water controller had told it to, and checked that the heating wasn’t on. The hot water controller had fired up the boiler, the heating wasn’t on, but on the boiler it wasn’t showing a tap symbol, but again showing a flashing radiator/gate symbol. If the radiator/gate symbol is supposed to be ‘heating mode’, then why is this on when the boiler should be generating hot water?

Any thoughts would be appreciated, even if I do need the engineer in, I'd still like to understand the general reason/issue/problem and potential solution to get us back to normal.

Cheers
 
Long winded post - short winded answer.

- boiler temperature setting not high enough.
- faulty boiler temperature sensor.

Many other reasons but these are the first I would check for
 
I'd say whoever removed the Stat and installed the fixed controller hasn't got it wired / setup quite right.
They need to come back.
 
you have a system boiler so the tap display is not used just the radiator display the boiler uses the same panel for multiple models there is usually a cover for the hot water control stat so you dont mess with it, leave it a lone it doesnt make the boiler work. use th heating/radiator controller for temperature settings on the boiler.
 
On your Boiler the Rad Symbol appears when something calls for heat. It shows whatever the call is. I take it you don't have the Vaillant controls/Wiring centre?
As Oz said, first port of call would be the Heating temp. If you do not have Vaillant controls/wiring centre, you can ignore the hot water setting on the Boiler.
 
Hi,

Many thanks for all your replies!

Main thing here is that the temperature of the hot water is not quite enough, but as I don't have any ways to control the hot water temperature from the boiler itself, i only have a thermostat fixed to the front of the cyclinder (not sure if this affects anything as mentioned on original post, I've turned it up twice to 70 deg), why would my new controller for heating the downstairs affect my hot water?

Could it be that this new controller isn't installed in the correct location? The electrician installed it in our hallway, which is always a bit colder than other rooms, it hovers around 17 degrees on a cold winter's day and never reaches the 'target temp of 20 degrees. However there are 2 radiators within the hall, one opposite the stat/controller, and one further down the corridor.

The flame symbol/bar is always quite low, never mid way or higher, is that an issue?

I do not have the Vaillant control centres, and I cannot adjust the hot water temp on the boiler, only the flow temperature, set at 70 degs and recently increased to 75 degs.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated!
 
Insufficient circulation - are all radiator valves fully open (both ends), balancing valve on hot water circuit fully open if fitted.

Boiler set to partial load.

Boiler temperature needs to be set to 75. Needs to be higher than cylinder stat temperature otherwise will not achieve set cylinder temperature.

Pumped showers with insufficient storage volume. Are these the same as before?

Wiring issue?
 
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