Sudden new loud noise!

Hello, I have lived in my house for 4 and half years. I have a Boilermate 2 upstairs in bedroom (what stupid place to put it, its soooo noisy when on!) and a Baxi Solo 2 boiler downstairs. When I first moved in I was amazed by the noise of the whole system and the fact that you could not control the boiler coming on every few hours or when you run the hot water. When this comes on in the middle of the night its really irritating, although, as with everything, you get used to it. I think I had nearly every local heating engineer around in the first year to try and fix noise, most did not understand the system so a waste of money. I had it cleaned out, water softener added etc. I did find someone who understood it finally and, even though its still noisy when boiler on, it seems to work reasonably (the noise, when water or heating on, is like someone running a bath all the time and reverberates through the whole house.) It was suggested that I keep the water store temperature on the Boilermate down on Summer temp even in Winter as there is only me in the house usually. Not sure if this is a good idea? Anyway, I am writing this as yesterday the boilermate started making a VERY loud buzzing and droning noise. (Its the same noise that is usually there when on, but about 5 times louder). This starts about 10 minutes after the boiler comes on for the heating, or water. It is not there all the time. I have called an engineer today and they are coming on Wednesday but I am really wary of someone fiddling with it, if they dont quite understand it! I have read one or two of the forums and realised that this has happened with others. Also the green light at the bottom of the boilermate has never worked. I would be very grateful for any feedback, thanks. (The house was built about 15 years ago)

Sorry for my delay in replying, work is BUSY at the moment!

The noise like someone running a bath is caused by the internal cold fill pipe being blocked. The unit is not actually full of water! Easily fixed in the short term by filling it properly through the open vent pipe. A better fix will be to bypass the blocked cold fill by fitting an external cold fill to the drain point tapping.

The buzzing noise is control board failure. There are two and both can make this horrendous noise. New boards will fix it.

Cheers, Mike

Mike

First of all, very impressed by the way you help so many of us. Trouble is I know more about my BM II than the Home Care British Gas guy. Ignorance was bliss.

After being in our refurbished house for 10 years, I have discovered that I have the wrong size BM. 17ish radiators and we have the FE 140. Our boiler on the other hand is a Potterton 80e, which can pump out 23 kW as opposed to what seems to be the recommended 14.6 'optimum' recommended by Gledhill for the FE 140.

Anyway, we have been reasonably happy with performance. I have replaced one noisy circuit board in the past.

Last week the boiler failed and Homecare replaced most parts on it (BTW Homecare get a big tick from me for responsiveness - even if they do not know much about the BM).

Next day, very poor hot water output. Homecare come back and increase the gas pressure, which was well below the range for the boiler.

This cures the lack of hot water - but now we experience your "running bath" sound - actually, more like a herd of small elephants! Only once or twice during the evening - but very unsettling - reverberates the whole house.

I immediately think we have over gassed the BM - there is a section in the fault finding to do with this. I am concerned that the BM is 'boilng over'. There is some water around the expansion tank - even though he plastic stopper is reasonably well fitted. I turned down both the bolier (was on MAX as recommended) and the BM. No further problems.

Rang Gledhill today - very helpful - though they did not mention the blocked cold fill possibility - probably because of my concerns re over gassing.

Today I put the boiler back to MAX and set the BM thermostat - this time it ended up at quite a low setting (post new gas pressure?). It is now only just into the winter range. This made me feel a bit better.

Anyway - this evening, same thing - loud running bath for about 20-30 seconds.

(The water in the feed & expansion cistern is quite hot).

The noise is quite intermittent, but it is a bit alarming.

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.

Paul