I've been experiencing problems with my central heating system recently, usually seems to be the heating not working - as opposed to hot water - although not as easy to notice if the hot water is off for a while.
I switched off the heating on the programmer and turned up HW thermostat and the boiler fired up OK.
Did the same with the HW and turned up the CH thermostat and nothing happened.
I removed the 3-way actuator and set the valve position manually, using the HW stat to fire the boiler up and pump water to the radiators. After maybe an hour I set the programmer back to normal - i.e. CH priority - and refitted the actuator and the CH worked fine, until the next day.
2nd day I left the actuator off all day, although I had managed to get the CH priority to work I adjusted the 3-way valve manually for the rest of the day. One thing I noticed is that the actuator body was very hot - even though it hadn't been any where near the CH pipework.
Assuming the motor was burned out, I sourced a new Synchron motor and replaced it. Refitted actuator and everything seemed to work fine - that was yesterday.
Woke up today and it was obvious that the heating had been on first thing - around 6am - but was no longer working. As the HW kicks in about 7am I'm assuming that when the valve switches from CH to HW and then back again this is where the problem occurs.
Could this be something jamming the valve? Could it be a problem with the micro-switches? Any other ideas?
My next step would be to replace the whole actuator, then maybe the valve, but I don't want to go down that route without some advice first.
One other comment - it is possible to turn the valve spindle all the way around. I'm not sure if this is relevant, but I did see on another site that this isn't supposed to happen.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Many Thanks, Ian.
I switched off the heating on the programmer and turned up HW thermostat and the boiler fired up OK.
Did the same with the HW and turned up the CH thermostat and nothing happened.
I removed the 3-way actuator and set the valve position manually, using the HW stat to fire the boiler up and pump water to the radiators. After maybe an hour I set the programmer back to normal - i.e. CH priority - and refitted the actuator and the CH worked fine, until the next day.
2nd day I left the actuator off all day, although I had managed to get the CH priority to work I adjusted the 3-way valve manually for the rest of the day. One thing I noticed is that the actuator body was very hot - even though it hadn't been any where near the CH pipework.
Assuming the motor was burned out, I sourced a new Synchron motor and replaced it. Refitted actuator and everything seemed to work fine - that was yesterday.
Woke up today and it was obvious that the heating had been on first thing - around 6am - but was no longer working. As the HW kicks in about 7am I'm assuming that when the valve switches from CH to HW and then back again this is where the problem occurs.
Could this be something jamming the valve? Could it be a problem with the micro-switches? Any other ideas?
My next step would be to replace the whole actuator, then maybe the valve, but I don't want to go down that route without some advice first.
One other comment - it is possible to turn the valve spindle all the way around. I'm not sure if this is relevant, but I did see on another site that this isn't supposed to happen.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Many Thanks, Ian.
