Hi all,
The other day I completed the purchase of a reposessed property which had been empty since about September 2009. All the services were off and central heating/plumbing had been drained in the flat when I first got the keys. There is currently no gas at the flat but we decided we would test the water systems. Anyway, cold water seems fine so I turned the tap on pipe to the boiler (a Powermax 155x) to fill the boiler and see if water would come out of the hot tap (even though it would obviously be cold). Nothing happened and if the water tap inline before the boiler is turned on to allow too much flow, it causes the tundish valve to overflow and start leaking (a lot). At this point I got a good plumber out and after a bit of diagnosis, he noticed that the seals on the pipes in the boiler looked wet and also that screw valve on the filling loop had a small leak. Since there were wet bits in lots of places, coupled with the fact it was a powermax boier, he came to the conclusion that the boiler was broken and that I would need a replacement which he would look into for me. He thought that maybe someone had turned the boiler on with no water in it?
After this not so good news, I decided to have a good look around on the internet to find out more about these boilers. Not exactly rave reviews, but I would much rather pay for a fix than a whole new system if at all possible! I discovered that leaking at the tundish is caused by the expansion vessel, pressure relief valve or temperature relief valve. I found the service manual for the Powermax 155x and also some useful posts on here which talk about comissioning the unit and restoring the pressure a sealed heating system. So last night I went back to the flat and bled one of the radiators to drop the water pressure in the system, tightened it back up and then used a foot pump to set the pressure in the expansion vessel to 0.7bar. I then loosened the auto air vent cap and shut off the flow loop so water should only go into the boiler and come out the hot tap. I found nothing would happen and if I increased the flow of water into the boiler, water would start to leak at the tundish again. The pressure needle on the front dial has never moved from 0! I turned the valves on the flow loop just to see if I could get some pressure reading from the boiler but nope nothing!
Please excuse my ignorance, I don't really know very much about all of this but I just wanted to exhaust other options before deciding to get a new boiler installed.
Any help would be much appreciated!
Thanks in advance
The other day I completed the purchase of a reposessed property which had been empty since about September 2009. All the services were off and central heating/plumbing had been drained in the flat when I first got the keys. There is currently no gas at the flat but we decided we would test the water systems. Anyway, cold water seems fine so I turned the tap on pipe to the boiler (a Powermax 155x) to fill the boiler and see if water would come out of the hot tap (even though it would obviously be cold). Nothing happened and if the water tap inline before the boiler is turned on to allow too much flow, it causes the tundish valve to overflow and start leaking (a lot). At this point I got a good plumber out and after a bit of diagnosis, he noticed that the seals on the pipes in the boiler looked wet and also that screw valve on the filling loop had a small leak. Since there were wet bits in lots of places, coupled with the fact it was a powermax boier, he came to the conclusion that the boiler was broken and that I would need a replacement which he would look into for me. He thought that maybe someone had turned the boiler on with no water in it?
After this not so good news, I decided to have a good look around on the internet to find out more about these boilers. Not exactly rave reviews, but I would much rather pay for a fix than a whole new system if at all possible! I discovered that leaking at the tundish is caused by the expansion vessel, pressure relief valve or temperature relief valve. I found the service manual for the Powermax 155x and also some useful posts on here which talk about comissioning the unit and restoring the pressure a sealed heating system. So last night I went back to the flat and bled one of the radiators to drop the water pressure in the system, tightened it back up and then used a foot pump to set the pressure in the expansion vessel to 0.7bar. I then loosened the auto air vent cap and shut off the flow loop so water should only go into the boiler and come out the hot tap. I found nothing would happen and if I increased the flow of water into the boiler, water would start to leak at the tundish again. The pressure needle on the front dial has never moved from 0! I turned the valves on the flow loop just to see if I could get some pressure reading from the boiler but nope nothing!
Please excuse my ignorance, I don't really know very much about all of this but I just wanted to exhaust other options before deciding to get a new boiler installed.
Any help would be much appreciated!
Thanks in advance
