Water pressure keeps rising - Potterton Profile 50e Boiler

[ted_smith]

Hi Found this site via Google - hope you can help me. I have an old boiler (Potterton Profile 50e) and it's been on almost non-stop for about a month but the last few days I noticed it has not felt as hot as usual.

Checked pressure bar that is attached to a weird red cylindrical shaped device. It keeps creeping to the level at which is often turns itself off - about 1 bar (a plumber said to me a couple of years ago to make sure the black line was between half and 1 full bar). It usually runs at about half a bar.

I have also noticed that there is a small grey pipe that feeds from the boiler to the outside of my house, and that has been dripping slowly (1 drip a second, say) for months.

I have turned the boiler off for now and in the last hour or so it has dropped to half bar again but what should I do next time I turn it on if it goes up again? With a 2 year old daughter, I can't not have the heating on in this cold UK weather! Thanks for any help Ted

 

[Billy Bob Bob]

you need to maintain pressure at 1 bar(cold) it can expand up as far as 2.5 bar when hot,the small pipe you refer to is a safety pipe if its dripping you expansion vessel(large red thing) has failed or your filling loops passing,however this has no bearing on the heat output unless the safety thermostat internal part of the boilers kicking in and shutting it down best advice i can give you is to call a gsr engineer in

 

[jimbo]

check vessel for leeks it may be leeking from the air filler valve its got a black cap on it and it just like a bicicle valve had the same probs with a few boilers of that age

 

[gasmarc]

dont be tempted to touch that valve as may release the pressure and you will be stuff

 

[jimbo]

if you got a a bic pump and a tester whats the prob
lm only pointing out that that could be the prob lve had this prob lots of times on old boilers

 

[gasmarc]

no problem but it helps if the system is empty first , most people end up deflating the expansion vessel