Cold Weather Heating Problems

Hi

I was wondering if anyone could help.

I have a Gledhill Boilermate 2000 fitted new in our house which was built in sept 2005. The hot water and heating has worked fine up to now when the outside temperature drops to minus figures, the hot water still remains unaffected but the heating simply does not come on, except on the emergency setting.

When the thermostat calls for the heating to come on the heating pump does not start.

My two kids and wife are seriously on my back - night time temps below -9 possibly why.

Could anyone please help.....

Cheers

Could be heating pump?
Check for supply at the pump.
All advice given in good faith and always be very careful what you are doing.

Thanks for the suggestion, I will check the supply, the only thing is that as the weather warms up the system kicks back into life as if there were no problems at all?

I wondered if there was some form of frost stat or cold system which may be faulty?

You will not get heating if the store temperature drops to low.
Hot water priority.
Have you got your boiler on max?
And on all the time?
If the unit is hot and you run a bath and the temp drops below 60 in the unit heating will not work.
That you can try, get it hot, heating working.
Run hot water off and the pump will stop after a while for the heating.
Let the unit heat up and it will start again.
It may be that the unit is under sized for your house.
If its a 125 litre then I would say so.
Mike

The boiler is on max and all the time.

The system was designed to supply the house so it would have been the suitable sized store/ boiler.

Where can you check the 60degree temp - is it on the main board on the thermal store with the small display?

This week my system has trouble with the CH, it too is a boilermate 2000 with a 60,000 BTU glowworm micron boiler 60FF.

When I turn the CH on the temperature in the thermal store goes from the holding temp of 77deg to below the 60 deg CH operating temp. The boiler & bolier pump engages at 74 deg however this doesn't stop the system from loosing the thermal mass it has accumulated. I've checked the header tank which is filled at the correct level and I have tried to monitor the CH sendout and return temp which is well within the 8 deg differential required by the spec.

Speaking to Gledhill response at 60p/min they didn't think there was anything wrong with the thermal store, however I've got some ideas of possible faults.

1. CH pump running slow, mine is running at the highest setting, slowing it down will only increase the thermal absorbtion from the rads and drain the thermal store further
2. Boiler Pump running too fast, this I assume works the opposite to the CH pump, the slower it runs the more thermal absorbtion from the boiler to the thermal store except you will have a reduced mass of liquid. (I need to talk to one of our process engineers!)

The system does work if I close 3 rads down, it survives running the CH at 60 deg, however this is a two stage event, initial switch on is brief this replaces the cold water in the rads with the thermal store water but the thermal store goes beneath 60 deg. I then turn of the CH system until the thermal store reaches about 63 deg, then I switch it on again, with the rads already containing hot water the thermal drain is slower the second time and the unit manages to operate at 60 deg from then on, open another rad however and it falls onto HW service

Any ideas for the experts?


Thanks

Thanks for the advice, typically the weather has warmed up and the system is operating normally again.

I will try the shutting of rads next time though.

Cheers

Hi,

I have this exact same issue. The same has been observed, store temperature decreases below 60 on initial cycle and eventually, as it heats the rooms, with lots of stopping and starting it will just about keep running the heating at 60.

I have tried adjusting the pumps, but with no success.

Now, I have added more radiators over the years, but the entire radiator circuit is only 30l compared to a store volume of 150l (BM185).

British Gas are keen to sell me a new boiler and keep telling me to change it, they may have a point! I have a 17 year old Myson Apollo 30B, which is only 9KW.

Are you both running old boilers? If not, that rules out my boiler being the cause of the problem.

Also, I've got hot water issues and the boilermate PCB buzzes when hot water demand is on.

Is it possible the PCB could be dying and causing all these issues?

Hi

My boiler Ideal is as new as the thermal store so it should not happen.

I have added an extension on the system including 5 rads and a heated towel radiator.

I have noticed that when the temp is below 60degrees the heating does not fire up and over it comes back to life.

Is it as simple as the boiler is under sized? would that be a solution? are there no cheaper solutions?

I am not an expert in any of this, but spend most of my time trying to keep this system working.

The system is designed to only run the heating when the store temp is above 60 degrees.

If you can find out what model of boiler you have, maybe we can compare outputs to see if you have a more powerful boiler than me.

It would seem that the heat draw on the store is greater than the heat being supplied, hence the temperature drops.

There are several solutions

Turn off some radiators - not a good idea
Increase volume of store - buffer the heat loss, but not practical
Increase rate of heating - increase boiler thermostat to max, slow down boiler pump or new boiler

I think my problem is a combination of boiler being too small, old and scaled up, as well as doubling the radiator capacity.

Being forced into a new boiler, but I think the store will have to go when I'm less poor!

I have checked my boiler and thermal store and models are as follows:

Boiler
Ideal Classic SE 15 FF

Thermal Store
150l

Cheers

Your boiler has a 15 KW output, assuming it's on max, so you should be in a better position than me!

This may be a feature of the thermal store, since from cold the water in the rads will be cold and drop the store temp quite quickly. The recovery time is the issue for me as the boiler just about compensates for the heat losses to the rads.

It would be worth calculating the KW rating for all your rads to see if it's way over 15.

I will try and add up the combined Kw of all the rads

The problem is not a fault but an undersized boiler then. If I can live with heating problems in the very cold weather then the problem is not a problem, but if I want to have a fully working system them I need a new boiler sized for the newly expanded system.

Happy days!

Actually thinking about it my boiler is approx. 60000btu and the system needs more like 75000btu

The boiler and boilermate 2000 is only 5 years old and worked fine last year in the cold whether, however my boiler has yet to be serviced

I'm surprised that manufacturers don't place more thermocouples on the units to detect problems as it would be easy to find the problem if I could monitor the sendout and return temperature of the boiler it would only cost a few pounds an LED display and 2 thermocouples.

The boilermate keeps on changing the range for the upper and lower set points for the thermal store 77deg limit, 74deg switch on boiler (evening) and 70deg limit and 66deg switch boiler on (morning), is this normal or has the thermal store thermocouple gone faulty. I was even wondering if the gas regulator on the meter is fault causing it to drop the gas pressure to the boiler in cold whether.

ricardo1000 wrote:This week my system has trouble with the CH, it too is a boilermate 2000 with a 60,000 BTU glowworm micron boiler 60FF.

When I turn the CH on the temperature in the thermal store goes from the holding temp of 77deg to below the 60 deg CH operating temp. The boiler & bolier pump engages at 74 deg however this doesn't stop the system from loosing the thermal mass it has accumulated. I've checked the header tank which is filled at the correct level and I have tried to monitor the CH sendout and return temp which is well within the 8 deg differential required by the spec.

Speaking to Gledhill response at 60p/min they didn't think there was anything wrong with the thermal store, however I've got some ideas of possible faults.

1. CH pump running slow, mine is running at the highest setting, slowing it down will only increase the thermal absorbtion from the rads and drain the thermal store further
2. Boiler Pump running too fast, this I assume works the opposite to the CH pump, the slower it runs the more thermal absorbtion from the boiler to the thermal store except you will have a reduced mass of liquid. (I need to talk to one of our process engineers!)

The system does work if I close 3 rads down, it survives running the CH at 60 deg, however this is a two stage event, initial switch on is brief this replaces the cold water in the rads with the thermal store water but the thermal store goes beneath 60 deg. I then turn of the CH system until the thermal store reaches about 63 deg, then I switch it on again, with the rads already containing hot water the thermal drain is slower the second time and the unit manages to operate at 60 deg from then on, open another rad however and it falls onto HW service

Any ideas for the experts?


Thanks