Boilermate 2000 + glowworm cutting out

I have Boilermate 2000 with Glow.worm hxi , came home one day to no heating or hot water. After speaking to Gledhills, the pcb board was renewed, all fine for couple of days then Glow.worm started leaking water,not much just a drip drip, plumber came back and replaced pipe, fine all working ok till 2 hours later when Glow.worm stopped firing showing F9 fault in window. Plumber reset o/h switch then renewed o/h switch. 1 hour or so later it has switched off again showing F9 as fault. This has been going on now for about a month, unfortunate Xmas,New Year and snow all came in the middle of this. I have switched system to emergency hot water and CH as required. I live on a development of about 20 houses all with the same system (built 2002/03) I think I am the 4th person to have problems with this system, everyone else has had the Gasboard in to carry out repairs and have been told the Boilermate cannot be repaired and they need new system . Can this be right?
I am waiting for the plumber to come back again ( he is a lovely chap but not familiar with the Boilermate) Can you suggest anything please.

Hi jant,

I have to say this advice to replace only ever comes from technicians who can't figure out what the problem is. You say 4 out of 20 houses in your development have this problem, but this means 16 don't so there's proof that the system CAN work!

Having said that, I encountered the F9 error once on a HXi and it remains a mystery. The boiler manual says F9 means low pressure or pressure sensor failure. It's a mystery because the HXi has no pressure sensor. Therefore I'm not surprised the gas board bloke (I presume you mean British Gas - they are a private company and NOT the 'gas board') was mystified too. I wish they wouldn't try to bluster their way out of it by telling you to get a new system though. The F9 on the HXi I was attending vanished shortly to be replaced by a completely blank boiler display screen. A new control board was diagnosed on the phone by Glow Worm tech support but that made no difference. Fault was eventually fixed by replacing the pre-mix fan.

Bottom line is I think this is a boiler fault not a Gledhill fault, but I don't know enough about the HXi to advise you properly.

Cheers, Mike

Thanks for prompt reply.

I've been looking at other posts here, is it possible that it could be the pump on the Boilermate 2000 causing this problem ? The system has been working great up till this happened

I don't think so. Boilermate 2000 pumps are extremely reliable. I've never had to replace one yet.

Cheers, Mike

Was the F9 flashing? Some Glowworm HXi manuals (but not the one I had) say that's an overheat fault. We had that a year or so back and the fix seemed to be replacing the burner door gasket. The theory being that the old rubber one was letting hot gas escape sometimes and that was causing the overheat thermostat to trip. The new graphite one seems to have done the trick as we've had no repeat.

Co-incidently, a month or so later the boiler was dripping water but that was the poor seals around the heat exchanger and the condensate trap. All changed to the new beefier versions and again seems to be OK now.

I conclude that the original specification of these boilers was poor.