Gas Central Heating

[tooj]

Help. The boiler warms up, but goes cold in a couple of hours starting from the bottom upwards. It was hot last night, cold when I got up, Heated up again 8.00 am cold 11.00am. Heated 7.oopm, bottom half cold already. Any ideas? Do I need a plumber or a gas engineer?

[The Builder]

tooj ............ do you mean a central heating boiler, or a copper immersion cylinder?
What sort of boiler?

[tooj]

Thanks for replying. Its a Baxi, and its a copper boiler in the airing cupboard. Its lagged properly and theres no sign of any leaks

[tooj]

I meant there is a copper tank in the airing cupboard. I know very little about these things.

[Old_Geezer]

So you are referring to the hot water tank. How you heat it is still a relevant question.

Are your radiators heating ok ?

Losing heat it 2 hours like that suggests you are using it somewhere. After all you say the water does heat up. If you have a timer, when is it set to come on & off ?

Maybe it isn't on long enough for what you use. Or maybe the temperature it is set too low a heat and doesn't get as hot as you believe.

If you are completely 'at sea' with all this why not try a plumber who has gas pipe training ? They'll boast of being Gas Safe registered.

[tooj]

The timer comes on for an hour in the morning and an hour at night. If we have baths or such we put the boiler on until the tank is hot again. This has worked for years and its only since Sunday that this has happened. We used to find that this system gave us warm water all day but now after half an hour or so we can feel the cold water creeping up from the bottom of the tank and in a couple of hours it really is stone cold. It looks like we shall have to get someone in. Thanks for replying, this is a mystery!

[Old_Geezer]

Be interesting to know what they find.

[The Builder]

Assuming the baxi heats the cylinder (and not the electric immersion element) then it sounds as though the boiler thermostat is faulty and cutting out before the right temp is reached.

If so, then it's a simple job for a boiler guy.

[tooj]

Boy is my face red! Someone had not switched the hot tap off properly and as there was a large type of sponge hanging from it was not apparent that the water was going down to the grid. Anyhow its fixed now so manyb thanks to you both for being available when I was in a bit of a tiz.