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Banging old boiler?


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Alo? Ma chaudiere est en panne.

 Avez-vous eu une livraison de mazout récemment ?

 Non!

Et la dernière fois vous avez fait entretenir la chaudière ?
 2001! 
OK, a demain.....
If your oil boiler is coughing and banging, or if the flame keeps going out, the probable cause is a blocked/dirty supply filter. The effect of a blocked filter is reduced oil flow, and thus the injector spray pattern becomes reduced with the resultant loss of injector pressure.

The filter element in the "glass" bowl should have a silvery appearance. If it looks black, it's blocked.

It is easy to change - if it ain't that old, you can wipe it clean, inside and out. Or just change it.

If you are feeling particularly handy, check the strainer in the fuel pump inlet too. It's usually missed and often en caca

It is also worth mentioning that the banging problems often follow an oil delivery. All the muck in the bottom of the tank gets severely agitated and drawn into the filter. It is a good idea to leave the boiler off until it has all settled - perhaps a day or so. If possible!

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As an “aside”, my gas boiler periodically will not ignite. It has one of those “bolt-on” burners (the multi-fuel things where you can change it for e.g. an oil burner). To get it going I just have to press the reset on the burner thing and it fires-up. Only really tends to happen in the colder weather (though this might because the boiler fires up and down a bit more in colder weather).

Not a great problem except in the cold where the frost-stat cannot always turn the boiler on to stop everything freezing.

Any ideas if it a trivial thing or more involved. Normally I don’t do anything with gas due to the risks, but would be interested if its “a new burner” or just “give the top a bash”.

Many thanks

Ian

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Gas (GPL or Nat) burners don't tend to suffer drift or coking or supply clag problems like their (pedantic) oil equivalents. The main problems are due to airborne contamination (dust, corrosion/erosion, soot and other detritus).

Since you have a firing problem on gas, I would carefully check the condition, cleanliness and setting of the electrodes, their cables and the ceramic insulators. This should be fairly straightforward.

Beyond that, give someone a call.

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Many thanks. I think I might call somebody anyway as I would not be too confidant dismantling the burner head bit. I’ll have a think as the boiler is not in the house and plumbers tend to take a year or more to get round. What you say fits as all I have to do is press the big yellow button (electric button, not a mechanical thing) and it starts up fine).

Many thanks

Ian

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