Vokera Compact boiler problem

[daveaspy]

I moved into a house last week with a Vokera Compact HE boiler - hot water has been fine and no need for heating until the last couple of days. Put heating on yesterday, noting the pressure gauge was very low and promising to do something about that! CH and DHW fine last night and turned CH off when we went to bed.

This morning wifey turned CH on and just got flashing red light - no heating, no DHW. Performing a reset brought the green light back but trying the heating locks out to red light again. This feels just like low pressure to me, but the thing is it wont fire up when I run the hot water taps with CH turned off - I thought you could run DHW with no CH? Will it magically come to life if I figure out where the filling loop is when I get home tonight?

 

[gas_man_gaz]

id sort the sys pressure out 1st so that can be ruled out.
on some vokera's the fill loop is on the cold mains valve (easy way to tell is if the valve has a black lever, turn it till it faces the opposite direction and see if it fills up) or take a pic of the underneath of the boiler and post it

 

[Agile]

Since you know the pressure is low then why did you not immediately increase that?

 

[rumplestiltskin]

...oops there goes another £84...

 

[ianmcd]

Under your boiler you will find hopefully 3 x 22mm pipes might only be 2 but the 2 important ones should be next to each other, follow these and one (usually the return) will have a hose connected to another pipe with valves, there are quite a few configurations but with your modern boiler should be easy to identify, this is how you re pressurise your system to 1.5 Bar when cold, if this doesnt work come back to what fault code you have and I will do my best to help you out

 

[daveaspy]

ok, I would have increased the pressure straight away had I known where the filling loop was and if it didnt have a wall unit constructed around it! Once I took off the cupboard off I found the filling loop valve (and realised I could just reach it without removing the cupboard!) and topped up to 1.5 Bar.

CH and DHW came back straight away. Pressure rose to 3 Bar (bottom of the max red arc on the gauge) once the CH was up to temp. However once we turned the CH off overnight the pressure fell right back to almost nothing by the morning so I guess there is a leak somewhere. I noticed some water on the surface under the boiler when I got home last night - not a huge puddle but looked more like dripping. I'll have to get the cover off and see if I can see anything leaking - any usual suspects?

 

[DP]

quite common for the pressure relief vent pipe termination at the PRV valve being poorly made, so drips here when 3 bar mark is reached.

It might be an idea if you get your boiler serviced by someone who services boilers instead of spring cleaning them

Look at the manual that came with the boiler. Turn to 'service' section and get someone to service the boiler as indicated. Expansion vessel possibly nil pressure or connecting pipe blocked. Rare but sometimes, EV needs replacing.

 

[daveaspy]

thanks! A service is definitely needed before the winter but I'd like to have an idea of any problems before somebody tries to rip me off with a part that doesn't need replacing I know a guy that does Worcester boilers and serviced my previous house but not sure if he services other makes