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Pressure Reducing Valves


Paul King

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Hi All,

We recently had our first annual service for our hot water/central heating boiler and asked the engineer to investigate why the boiler water overflow was constantly running – almost as much as a partly open tap. He responded by identifying a small valve within the boiler which had failed and showed us the history of the boiler on his computerised records and showed us that this has happened previously on a regular frequency – he said the problem was the pressure reducing valve fitted just prior to the boiler “was too short”. He pointed to the fact than whenever any water was run from the system it takes a while to fill back up again and the valves in the boiler were breaking due to a build up of pressure issue. I am no plumber so wanted to ask is the resolution as simple as seeing if the pressure reducing value can be adjusted – I am assuming it needs to allow more pressure as the water pressure from our taps and shower is very low. However, if we increased the water pressure would this not just make the pressure build up in the boiler worse?

Please bear in mind the complete boiler discussion was in French and my French is now up to this industrial standard so I have made some, or many misinterpretations!

We only use the house as a holiday home and live near Villebois in Dept 16 – if there is a plumber in the area who believes they could help we would be most grateful.

Best Regards

Paul.

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Is it possible that what you might need is a "vase d'expansion"? French hot water systems are (normally? always?) fully pressurised, so when cold water gets heated and expands, it has to go somewhere, and it can't just expand into the header tank as there isn't one. If you don't have one of these then where the water goes is out of the ballon's safety valve.

Mind you, if your plumber's any good, and you haven't got one, he should suggest fitting one.

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[quote user="Paul King"]Hi All, We recently had our first annual service for our hot water/central heating boiler and asked the engineer to investigate why the boiler water overflow was constantly running – almost as much as a partly open tap. He responded by identifying a small valve within the boiler which had failed and showed us the history of the boiler on his computerised records and showed us that this has happened previously on a regular frequency – he said the problem was the pressure reducing valve fitted just prior to the boiler “was too short”. He pointed to the fact than whenever any water was run from the system it takes a while to fill back up again and the valves in the boiler were breaking due to a build up of pressure issue. I am no plumber so wanted to ask is the resolution as simple as seeing if the pressure reducing value can be adjusted – I am assuming it needs to allow more pressure as the water pressure from our taps and shower is very low. However, if we increased the water pressure would this not just make the pressure build up in the boiler worse? Please bear in mind the complete boiler discussion was in French and my French is now up to this industrial standard so I have made some, or many misinterpretations! We only use the house as a holiday home and live near Villebois in Dept 16 – if there is a plumber in the area who believes they could help we would be most grateful. Best Regards Paul.[/quote]

Some more information would be useful.

Your boiler make and model, The hot water is instantaneously heated like a UK combi boiler? so no hot tank, this only occurs when you run the hot tap not when its just running central heating? What is the pressure gauge reading?

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