Safety Lockout

[chrishutt]

I work out that the annual service charge is 216

But this doesn't take account of earnings lost through having to take days off work to await arrival of a succession of BG guys.

As for slagging off BG, the evidence speaks for itself. Penster has reported what happened, and it seems clear that 2 out of 3 engineers got it completely wrong, and the third "didn't know what to do really. Poked around but didn't actually do much".

You've got to admit, it doesn't look good for BG. OK, there are some good BG engineers (I guess you're one, ollski?), but they seem to be a bit thin on the ground sometimes. And of course there are loads of incompetent non-BG engineers too.

However BG recently went to the trouble of funding national TV and press adverts trying to give the impression that we non-BG engineers were a rum lot, so in my book they deserve to be criticised when they fall flat.

Hopefully Penster will post Tuesday evening and keep us up to date. We shall see.....

 

[Penster]

Well, another BG came round today. He replaced........something......air pressure something , cleaned out the venturi again and tightened the connections of the thermostat. Was looking good and I felt a little more confident.

Came home tonight and the heating was on - wohoo, but then after a while it tripped out again

Ok, so this guy didn't fix it but he has still restored a little bit of my faith in the company. He was honest, he didn't patronise me, he was very understanding and very apologetic. He was clean, well presented and he didn't smell (which is more than can be said for some of his colleagues!). He has given me his number and is going to ensure this gets fixed (which is also what the other engineers should've done).

 

[chrishutt]

Well, one good(ish) guy out of four - but the boiler's still not fixed. Thanks for keeping us posted on this - we look forward to the next installment!

Can I remind you of an early post on this thread -

Its often the PCB which seems to give that problem on your model.

Tony (Agile) usually knows his stuff. Get BG to bring a PCB next time.

 

[Penster]

Can I remind you of an early post on this thread

Thanks for the reminder. Will be sure to mention it. Do you know what this means......."You can often isolate fault to pcb by pushing the knobs in which bends it a bit and makes the problem go/come.".........which knobs?

 

[chrishutt]

Don't know, but I would guess the temp. control knobs, which would normally fit directly onto "potentiometers" (variable resistors) on the PCB.

 

[Agile]

If it was a Halstead Finest Gold pcb then we would charge £187 inc. plus the diagnostic charge of £84.

I do have to say that I find this discussion too hard to follow as a "relaxing evening unwind" from the real world.

Whilst I dont rate BG engineers as that bad, it does sound as if this problem is taking a little too long to resolve.

At least they dont rip off customers! I went to someone today who had been charged £350 for a replacement fan ( List £128 ) and he had just refitted the old one !!! Had a new fan been needed we would have charged £96 but it only needed the venturi cleaning.

Tony

 

[joe-90]

Has anyone checked the little solenoid that allows water into the boiler? I don't know what it is called but I had a very similar problem to this poster. It took the company 4 weeks and 5 visits to sort it. (Not BG).

They changed everything before finally contacting the boiler manufacturer's engineer who told them straight off what it was. What had happened is that the tabs the wires fastened to had corroded and made a high resistance contact that caused the boiler to lock-out intermittently.
It's definitely worth a look see.


joe

 

[chrishutt]

the little solenoid that allows water into the boiler?

New one on me. Are you thinking of washing machines? Or perhaps you mean a flow switch?

 

[joe-90]

the little solenoid that allows water into the boiler?

New one on me. Are you thinking of washing machines? Or perhaps you mean a flow switch?

No, neither. I saw them fix it. It was a small disc shaped job on the water inlet pipe. Iasked him what it was for and he said it was a cut-off to prevent the burner igniting when there was no water in the boiler.
So actually, I've got it wrong way round. It cuts off the rest of the system when there is no water so I guess it must be a type of flow switch. What happened, is that the resistance was so high it kept on cutting off the boiler inermmitently which needed resetting. Sometimes it would reset straight away, and at other times would take about an hour or more.
When he disconnected the terminal it actually fell off in his hand.

Sorry to confuse matters, but it was the reason behind the odd fault.


joe

 

[chrishutt]

Ah, that's a water pressure switch. Pretty standard on boilers these days, but not on the water inlet pipe. It would have been on the return pipe of the boiler system circuit.

Joe, if you're going to make postings on this site, you need to do some homework - study some boiler diagrams to see what's what.

 

[Penster]

Next installment will be on Fri night/Sat because they're coming over Friday morning. This time the big chief is coming too which must be a good thing

Watch this space

 

[joe-90]

Ah, that's a water pressure switch. Pretty standard on boilers these days, but not on the water inlet pipe. It would have been on the return pipe of the boiler system circuit.

Joe, if you're going to make postings on this site, you need to do some homework - study some boiler diagrams to see what's what.

Well that is what was wrong with my particular boiler. He said it was on the INLET as it stopped gas going to the heat exchanger when there was no water passing into the system. Whether you like it or not I have every right to pass this information on. After all - you don't seem to have solved the problem do you? And yes, they are a CORGI company.


The reason I am putting this idea forward is that I had a very similar problem a few months back. They changed the main PCB twice (luckily under warranty) amongst a host of other things.
I am trying to save this poster a lot of hassle and money. If his problem is the same as mine was it is a 10 minute job to sort it. It is something that should be considered before going for big money options like PCBs.

Sorry if that offends you Chris - but that's the way it has to be.
I'm not a plumber - but I can fix the car and I'm not a mechanic either!





joe

 

[chrishutt]

Sorry if that offends you Chris

No it doesn't offend me in the least. I'm too old to be bothered by such trivial things.

I wasn't saying that you shouldn't post, just that it would help if you got to know the insides of boilers a bit, so at least we'd understand each other a little better. You really shouldn't take these things so personally.

As for helping Penster, I shall leave it to him to say if he's found our input helpful, but I'd be very surprised if the answer wasn't "yes". Don't you think the special attention now being given to his boiler might be connected to the publicity it's getting on this forum?

 

[joe-90]

Chris. All I am saying is that there is a device in the boiler (which I now realise is a flowsitch) that (when water is flowing) energises the relay that opens the main gas inlet to the burners. When that flowswitch has a resistance that rises too high it will create an 'open-circuit' fault and the gas supply will be removed (to prevent the burner burning onto an empty heat exchanger).

That was the problem I had. It took 3 CORGI men 4 weeks to sort (after phoning the manufacturer).
It seemed to me that this poster may well have had a similar problem - but no-one had mentioned it - so I did.
I'm not being a smartass trying to pretend I'm something I'm not but I thought I may be able to help.

That's about it really.


joe

 

[chrishutt]

Joe, you may well have a valid point. The Halstead finest has 2 flow switches, one for the DHW and one on the primary circuit (which is the one you mean, although it's not on the "inlet").

These flow switches are normally open and close in response to flow. As you say, if the switch contacts were corroded it might fail intermittently to make the circuit. It should be quite easy to check if this was at fault by testing for continuity while the pump was running.