Getting To Grips With The Killer Heating System
I think it is best to document what I have here first. Engineers have problems and try to solve them. Others have theories and try to prove them.
With any problem you start by writing down what you’ve got.
The Boiler
This is a fairly common Vaillant boiler.
The Boiler
It has been regularly serviced and when I took the house over I found that the control circuit was broken, so a new one was fitted.
I have no manuals for it, as is the case for everything else in this house.
It would appear to be running well.
Boiler Temperature And Pressure
But I have no idea if the temperature and pressure shown are correct.
The Control Timer
This is a pretty standard Honeywell product.
The Control Timer
It seems to work without trouble.
What the boxes underneath do, I know not!
The Downstairs Manifold
The pipes to the underfloor heating end up here.
The Downstairs Manifold
The pipes always seem to be warm when the boiler is on, with the individual zone controllers having no effect.
So in other words the only way to control the heating is from the master thermostat.
Upstairs there is a similar manifold, which is just as out of control. I’ve got it switched off, so I only have heating downstairs and let it find its way up the stairs.
My House Is Trying To Kill Me!
23:00 I’m sitting here with the heating off. I have the underfloor heating box open and the pipes are cold, so no heat is coming into the room from the heating. The air conditioning is off. But I can feel the temperature is rising.
I should say that I have a Maplin temperature meter and this agrees with the one in the air conditioning system. They are both saying 22°C and forty percent humidity.
I’ve checked and the boiler has shut down, but the temperature downstairs is going up and is now at 24°C and rising. All the floors downstairs are hot, when surely they should be cold as the boiler switched itself off an hour ago. In fact, I think I might have started to see the temperature rise start when it shut itself off at ten o’clock.
It’s the sort of story you read in horror films. But now we do know I was boiled as it actually gets hotter in this house overnight.
It also explains why I felt so much better in Liverpool. It wasn’t Liverpool, but it wasn’t being in this killer house.
23:30 – The meter was showing 25°C when I brought it upstairs and threw the windows wide open, which brought the temperature back to 22°C.
23:50 – The meter was showing 24°C downstairs and the floors are still hot. The air-con meter shows 20°C upstairs, but it seems rather hotter than that to me.
I shall be doing some serious investigating in the morning.
One conclusion is that neither the top or the bottom zones work. If the heating is on it piles heat out willy-nilly no matter what the settings of the thermostats.
The Anonymous Widower 