Profile 50e - a few problems!!

[profile50e]

Hi & Seasons Greetings!

I have a Potterton Profile 50e, sealed system with a few problems that I hope someone may be able to shed some light on:

1. In the summer, when HW only, the rads heat up. In the winter, when HW+CH, the heaters don't get hot or stay hot once the hot water cylinder is hot. I guess this means the motorised valve has failed??

2. The boiler has suddenly stopped working this morning. When cycling HW or HW+CH, the pump works, there are garbling noises in the system like water moving around, but no fan, no spark, no flame. Boiler seems completely dead?

3. One of the rads suddenly stopped working about a month ago - I guess that's just a valve problem?

4. The last time I checked the pressure when the system was hot, the needle was on 1, which seems to be the bare minumum it should ever be on. I guess it needs to be recharged or topped up? What's the norm for this - if its a recharge, what should I ensure the CH engineer does in terms of add chemicals or whatever?

Thanks for anything you can add!

 

[plumbnuts]

1 The motorised valve has failed -You can buy a new syncron motor for it quite cheaply which might solve the problem.
2 Water pressure on guage should be 1.5 bar when system completely cold. Fill up via filling loop and then vent all the rads. Re fil system to 1.5 bar. Push reset button on boiler and hopefully it will work!
Is there a thermostatic valve fitted to therad that's not working?

 

[profile50e]

I checked the reset and its already pushed in, so I suspect something has failed in the boiler as well as the motorised valve and the therm valve in the rad.

I found the filling loop - a silver flexi cable above the cylinder..? but not keen on touching it in case something starts leaking!

Can low pressure cause the symptoms of the boiler not working? I.e. no fan, no spark, etc?

 

[ChrisR]

Do you have 1 x 3 port valve or 2 x 2 ports , or .... ?

Whatever, if your pump's running the boiler should be too. Fan starts first, so yours may have died, or less lilely, the pcb which drives it.
If you have a multimeter and the circuit (potty site) you can tell which soon enough.

 

[profile50e]

Hi Chris, there's 1 valve and its a Honeywell 3-way with a lever underneath it that seems to sit in any of 3 positions.. never noticed that lever before.!?

I checked the pump it is working fine.

Still waiting for my engineer to call back. Its bloody freezing!! Might go for a drive to warm up lol.

Thanks.

 

[ChrisR]

Yep, it should spring back to the left if you turn everything off. If not, it's jammed open AND your boiler's packed up!

Hope your Immersion Heater is working for HW?

 

[profile50e]

Yep, immersion OK. Cheers for your help Chris.

PS Fixed the rad problem by reading the FAQ (the needle was stuck - its freed now).

 

[profile50e]

While I wait for for the engineer, does anyone know if low pressure can cause a Profile 50e to act like this? (One of the FAQs states that low pressure can cause a boiler to stop working).

So therefore, is it worth trying to restore the pressure by opening valves 3&4 (see pic)? Any gotchas when doing this?

Thanks.

Update - managed to get pressure back up just over 1 bar by opening valve 3 in the picture below. I opened it just slightly and heard the water entering the system. Took about 30 seconds to get up to 1 from where it was.

Boiler still not firing though, so looks like there is another problem (i.e. the fan).

PS Excellent FAQs.

 

[profile50e]

It was an electrical problem - loose connection to the fan. All working now. Thanks for the replies.