CENTRAL HEATING BROKEN DOWN? POSSIBLE SOLUTION

Our heating and hot water failed on Friday. It is a gas-fired condensing boiler system which is efficient, simple to use and has reduced our gas bills. It has served us well for over two years.

We read the booklets, phoned the provider, phoned the manufacturer and got nowhere. Thanks to a skilled, helpful friend, we now know what to do about it. In case you have an unsolved problem and are in a cold house, you could check to see if you can solve the problem yourself.

The fault code displayed on the boiler was described in the Instruction Manual as "flame not detected". The suggested remedies were related to gas pressure. These remedies turned out to be irrelevant as the cause was a frozen outlet pipe.

As well as heating radiators and water a condensing boiler creates:

> a plume of water vapour;

> a drip of condensate.

The drip is discharged to the nearest drain, via a pipe. If there is a bend in this pipe, and there will be unless there is a drain directly below the outlet, in freezing weather the pipe may get blocked by ice. If your heating fails, try pouring hot water over the outlet pipe until ice drops out. Our friend did this for us yesterday and we have repeated the procedure this morning.

I would be interested to know how widespread a problem this has been, and if readers have had difficulties and expense in sorting it out. You can use the comments column on this website or send me an email: esther.boyd@moseleyforum.org.uk