Heating not working

[zaffa]

Help! We've completed on our house today which has been empty for a few months only to find that the heating isn't working properly and none of the radiators on the ground floor get hot at all. I can't get an engineer out til Monday but it sounds like it's going to be expensive to fix

Is there anything I can do, to reclaim some of the costs from the vendor? The estate agent had been renting the property out but told me that they hadn't inspected it or anything else since October last year when they handed responsibility back to the vendor. I specifically asked whether the heating would be kept on to prevent problems and they said yes but the heating was off when we got there today.

I'm so angry - I knew I should have refused to exchange until I saw the heating working but I stupidly trusted them that the property was still being maintained.

I am not in any way a heating expert but I chuckled when I saw the picture of your boiler because I thought it looked just like ours, which is, indeed, a Potterton Profile. We had a slight issue with it last year and we're seriously thinking about replacing it until our heating engineer told us that, in his opinion, these are among the best boilers and he would prefer to repair it. Thankfully, it only cost about £200 to repair and considering that other than the annual service, that's the only money it's cost us in the 23 years we've had it, I'm definitely a fan.

Just to add to the point about draining the HW system because of Legionnaires, fair enough so. However, please remember that Legionnaires is an airborne disease distributed through the steam from the HW or aircon system.

Take steps to avoid the area while all that hot water is running and allow as much ventilation as possible. It can even be transferred in an outdoor setting where one would think there is all the ventilation one would need. (I read an interesting book on the whole subject once 'cos it was fascinating.)

@TheSandgroper I wish I had read that post earlier.... as I just ran the bath taps until the water ran cold. Whilst I worked away in the bathroom and surrounding rooms... and didn't open the windows as I was grateful for the little bit of heat coming off the water to heat up my chilly house. wanders off to Dr Google...

Tbf you're much more likely to contract Legionella if you are very young, elderly or have a compromised immune system. My apologies that I didn't suggest making sure you weren't breathing in any water vapour.

I understand it's contaminated water droplets from spray, rather than steam.

Can I just send a quick thanks - even though the heating is still not quite right taking all the steps recommended here has helped me get that awful chill out of the air and the house is almost habitable now. Thank you mumsnetters! (And roll on Monday when the engineer can make it work perfectly all the time 😊)

As long as the hot water is over 60°C it should be fine. The reason I suggested turning all the hot water taps on was to flush as much of the pipework through with hot water and remove any water that's been sitting in the pipes.

Just an update - it was a balancing issue and is now all sorted! So thank you to @PigletJohn and everyone else for the help - if t hadn't been for you I would have spent the weekend freezing! If I'd done the last step and completed the rest of your instructions I wouldn't have needed the engineer at all - thank you!!

Glad it is all fixed and you are all warm and toasty again.

OOI, what did they have to do?

I wasn't here at the time but the note says it just needed to be rebalanced, and that at some point I may want to change the thermostat. It's coming on independently of the hot water too so not sure if I just panicked thinking it wasn't - but it was exactly as you said