Hot water not very hot

[wooooofudge]

We have an Ideal Mexico floorstanding boiler which must be 30 years or so old and the hot water tank in the bathroom cupboard is orange/yellow. It's about 4 ft tall.

The heating is working fine, but the hot water is just warm. We switched both the water and the heating off at the wall control when we went away for a fortnight, but we've been back since Friday night now and even though I put the water on for several hours yesterday, in case it needed longer than the programmed couple of hours evening and morning to heat the tank from completely cold, it's still not hot.

Any ideas or suggestions how to resolve this? I'm not familiar with hot water tanks having lived in houses with combi boilers for about thirty years. I don't know how to set the water temp - it was good and hot before we went away though.

I forgot to say, if you bleed the highest radiator in the house, does water squirt out forcefully and without dying away? Do this with the boiler and pump off.

Ooh - right. That'll be the valve labeled 'domestic flow'. Do you mean push it to manual in order to get hot water from the boiler then switch it back afterwards, rather than leaving it man open constantly until it's fixed? I don't want to cause another problem by doing the wrong thing.

Unfortunately my oppo isn't here for a couple of days to have one of us switch the HW on and off while the other is by the boiler. Is it worth turning the HW on, going up to the boiler and moving the switch anyway?

if the boiler and pump are running, then setting the lever to "Man" will (should) cause the cylinder to be heated. It is better to set it back to Auto afterwards. Anyone trying to diagnose the problem may not know it has been altered. Also the HW could become scaldingly hot. The supply to the cylinder will be open all the time the lever is on Manual.

Luggage labels tied on things you have changed are a good reminder.

You are going to need a mender.

Thanks. I think that did the trick temporarily and, yes, that's on my list of things to arrange tomorrow. What do I say the diagnosis is, or should I just leave it for the mender to figure out?

I think we had a similar problem last year apart from ours wouldn't turn off rather than not turn on (pigletjohn helped me diagnose it as well). Plumber came and squirted the valve with wd40 and it has worked fine since.