Time for Central Heating - but will it Work?!, 28th Sept

 

Another cold morning and as I’m sitting doing desk work, I got out the electric fire. We have the best part of 3-weeks stay remaining and it isn’t getting any warmer. So, we decided to try and get the central heating working. Central heating that hadn’t been used in anger during the three years we’d been here and who knows for how long before that. I ‘knew’ the boiler was working 3 years ago as the son of the vendor showed me how to operate it. But for the past couple of year not only had it not been fired up, the system had also been drained to avoid freezing in winter, when we’re not here.

First job was to refill the system. That went well enough. Next, find our ‘homespun’ guide to the house, in which I’d put basic operating instructions. These remained clear and the start-up appeared to go well – or did it? What was that red light next to a symbol that looked like a hairdryer with a cross through it? Also, whilst the boiler had been noisy, as the guide suggested it would, the noise abated after seconds rather than the 5-10 minutes the guide predicted. Uhm?

I lifted the front cover off the boiler. There was a small viewing window. I assume there should be a pilot light on in there (there wasn’t – though this appears to have been a wrong assumption, you only see anything when the boiler is fully firing).

Starting to suspect that all wasn’t as it should be, I tasked Sally with trying to locate the ‘manual’ that my ‘homespun’ guide said we had. No luck, perhaps it is in the UK. I watched a video on YouTube but that was really covering how to bleed/restart after letting the fuel run dry – not the problem we had. Then I found a manual, online, for a boiler similar to ours and in English. Scanning through, it was pretty clear that red light was an error light. A reset routine was described, and I was able to run something similar on our boiler. No joy. Tried again, still no change. Third attempt – whoosh! And flames clearly visible in the viewport.

Next, we bled the radiators and topped up the water again to maintain pressure. That was a couple of hours ago and all still seems fine. Ironically, the day has heated up so we’re still not 100% sure the radiators will heat, but we’ll know soon enough. And I can hear the boiler start/stop in response to the thermostat which we currently have fairly low - seems promising.