stonerblue said:
I love a good boiler thread.
My advice would be to stop fannying about with the boiler and let the plumber do it. If the outside con' pipe isn't frozen, the water pressure is set and you've tried to re-set the boiler and it's still not working then leave it too the pro.
We have a poster (salfordpaul i think) who knows his stuff and always helps on these threads.
My boiler is working fine but seems to be struggling when heating water for a bath or shower. I have to turn hot tap off once it starts running cold and then wait for a fresh tank of hot to be ready. If it's the shower, the hot just stops after 5 minutes. Something is obviously struggling but no idea what?
Stoner.. Somehow only the top of the tank is heating up. Do you have some sort of tank with 2 heat exchange coils in, one at the top and one at the bottom? First thing to look for is do you have a control/switch that says something like shower/bath (one for half tank and one for bottom half). If so it/s stuck on shower, probably a solenoid valve which would be next to the tank.
How old is your hot water tank? It sounds like you've got a problem with the heat transfer inside the tank. Find where the hot feed and return are. If they are 2/3 of the way up the side of the tank and directly below it near the bottom you've got a coil. Could be sludged up or you may have an airlock in the circuit (but you normally get no hot at all). Check out different ways of getting it out but can't advise as it depends on your layout. If the feed and return come in through the top or near the top where the electric element used to be (these were a 1970's retrofit) you should be in luck, these should have a bleed valve so just crack it/ them open to bleed the air out.
I'm assuming here that you've got conventional pumped gas central heating with an indirect gravity fed hot water cylinder.
