Ravenheat boiler only fires up when the plenum chamber cover is removed

[Sarie]

Hi all, I'm new here but trying to solve an issue with our Ravenheat boiler. It's an RSF 820/20 boiler.

The pilot light is on but we've had an issue where the boiler takes a while to fire up when you put the heating on or run the hot tap. Sometimes it can take up to 5 minutes. Originally we were told it could be the air pressure switch and to give it a bit of suck and blow action to clean any rubbish out of it then re-fit it. Upon doing this we thought we'd seen an improvement but actually realised it was because we'd removed the plenum cover during the process and refitted it. Now if we try fiddling with the air pressure switch without removing the plenum chamber cover we see no improvement.

We ordered a new air pressure switch just to be sure it wasn't that as Ravenheat tech suggested that it was most likely the cause of our fault. We fitted it but if anything the issue is now worse with the boiler failing to fire up entirely. We now cannot get it to fire up even after a period of time but the pilot light is still lit.

If we remove the plenum chamber cover the boiler will fire up immediately 100% of the time but as soon as we refit it the problem starts again.

Can anyone help? We've no idea what the issue could be.

Thanks! 🙂

 

[SafeGasInstall]

please call a local heating engineer who is gas safe register ! please do not attempt any more work your self .......safety reason

pls visit this Gas Safe Register | Ensure your gas engineer is registered.

 

[Sarie]

please call a local heating engineer who is gas safe register ! please do not attempt any more work your self .......safety reason

pls visit this Gas Safe Register | Ensure your gas engineer is registered.

We're not tinkering with anything gas related though... we'd never even dream of touching the gas related parts of the boiler ourselves. We're only looking at the air supply at the moment as there are plenty of parts that are simple to replace/clean without touching the dangerous parts of the boiler.

We've already had a plumber out once and he charged over £100 and didn't fix the issue so we're not keen to call another plumber out unless we have to. At the very least we'd like to have an idea of what the issue is before we make another call.

Surely the fact it only works with the plenum chamber cover removed should be a pretty clear symptom of what could potentially be at fault to anyone with any boiler experience? That's what we're hoping at least...

🙂

 

[SafeGasInstall]

i have said all I could to stop you from removing any part of your boiler ! pls read before you remove any part of your boiler http://www.User PlumbersForums.net ...t link to it.co.uk/advice/being_gas_safe.aspx

 

[Sarie]

i have said all I could to stop you from removing any part of your boiler ! pls read before you remove any part of your boiler Gas safety in the home

Thanks again for your concern 🙂 Assume then that as we've already diagnosed the issue we're not going to fiddle with the boiler anymore as we don't need to as we already know the symptoms (we put the plenum chamber cover back on last night and don't intend to remove it again).

Based on the symptoms, can anyone advise what the fault could be? If we have an idea of what it is we can at least advise our plumber so we don't get charged for nothing again...

 

[SafeGasInstall]

could be a number of things and they all are related to burning the gas , is there horizontal or vertical flue ?

 

[Sarie]

could be a number of things and they all are related to burning the gas , is there horizontal or vertical flue ?

It's horizontal I think!

 

[jtsplumbing]

First is your PLUMBER gas safe ? is he going to come back FOC ? if you have concerns about costs why not call out Ravenheat to do repair, if you have diagnosed the fault then you know what the problem is so tell the plumber when he return's, cant see how he can charge you again if he has't sorted fault,

 

[wards]

gsr required not plumber.

 

[GQuigley67]

not all plumbers know how to repair boilers or are good at it, some will guess and throw parts at it, your best finding a service & repair engineer who does this for a living, I do installs every day so not got alot of experience repairing boilers i may spend all day scratching my head where a service engineer would be able to diagnose and repair easier than me but probably take longer installing a boiler than me, if you dont know any local engineers then quick call to the manufacturer for a fixed price repair would be best option, dont mess with it yourself the air supply side is as important as the gas side

 

[Sarie]

Apparently he's gas safe, he said he does a lot of boiler work. Ravenheat don't send out techs, they just provide email support so we can't ask Ravenheat to come out. We haven't really diagnosed it, that's why I'm here... all we've done is narrow down the symptoms.
I know zilch about boilers and don't intend to offend by implying I have a clue but it's my understanding that the plenum chamber maintains an air pressure for proper distribution and discharge of secondary air. Presumably if the burners aren't getting sufficient air supply then they won't be able to fire up so from the symptoms I'm guessing we have an issue where air pressure is not being correctly maintained.. thus we narrowed it down to the air pressure switch originally and Ravenheat also suggested that would be the likely fault.
As replacing the switch hasn't fixed it we're now just trying to find out whether or not it's likely to be a fault related to air pressure or if the whole thing is a red herring and it's more likely to be related to the gas parts in which case we'll have no choice other than to call our plumber back.
I'm not even sure what he tinkered with last time but he got it to start firing up reasonably well but within a few days of his "repair" it had gone back to taking several minutes so clearly not fixed 🙁

Wish we'd got boiler cover now but they won't cover for existing issues so we have to fix this one before we can take out some cover. Sounds like we've maybe had a cowboy plumber who thinks he knows his stuff but doesn't too :/

 

[jtsplumbing]

Strange , Ravenheat have been looking for service engineer's in Bristol area, unless they only do warranty work ! were are you located Sarie ?

 

[Sarie]

Really? Maybe the tech we spoke to got it wrong then... !? We're located near Burton-on-Trent so Midlands 🙂

 

[jtsplumbing]

Really, They had a job on Gov web site last week in Plymouth (£11per Hr) with van etc.