Help! New boiler broken

[Boilerhelpplease]

Hoping someone can provide some advice on a boiler issue I’m having. We had a new Vaillant ecoFIT pure 418 condensing boiler installed last November. There were concerns from the beginning as the installer was extremely young and seemed inexperienced as he was on the phone for half of the day asking colleagues for advice. When we booked the installation we were told that a fully qualified engineer and an apprentice would be fitting it and it seemed from appearances and competence that the apprentice was sent to do it. We were originally told the job would take around 4-6 hours but in total he was here from 8am until gone 7pm. The concern regarding the installer’s competence was confirmed the following day when the boiler was found to be leaking water from the bottom, another engineer came round to repair it and described the issue as a “schoolboy error”. Obviously having spent the best part of £3k, this was all less than ideal.

Almost straightaway the radiators started to experience problems, making lots of noise, heating up from the bottom and remaining cold at the top and leaking (see photos of the leaking). I called the company that installed the boiler and instantly they were on the defensive and saying they didn’t install the radiators and it was nothing to do with the new boiler. This is despite there being no issue whatsoever with the radiators before the new boiler was installed (the old boiler - 7 years old - was leaking and the same company advised the repair cost would outweigh the value of it which is why we got a new one. Other than the leak, the old boiler was performing without issue).

Anyway, another engineer came round, bled all the radiators and replaced a number of the bleed valves. Notwithstanding this, the same issue occurred throughout the rest of the winter with radiators heating from the bottom, being cold at the top and making lots of noise. Bleeding them seemed to make no difference. As the company had been so difficult and with other life issues going on, I didn’t call them again (now realising this was a big mistake but we are where we are!).

Also, this may be irrelevant but just in case it isn’t, the boiler itself makes very loud clicking noises when it is on, something the old boiler didn’t do. In addition, the outside boiler flue and the cage around the lower flue appear to have green and pink deposits on them - again, not something I ever saw with the old boiler.

Anyway, fast forward to today when we switched on the radiators for the first time and the boiler has stopped working altogether. It has error code F.23 and neither the radiators or the hot water are now working. Tried bleeding the radiators and then resetting the boiler which resulted in a new error code F.83.

I will call the boiler company tomorrow but I am cautious given their defensive response last time so would like to be armed with as much information as possible to avoid a huge bill. We have a 1 year warranty on workmanship and an 8 year boiler warranty.

Sorry for long post, wanted to put as much information down as I wasn’t sure what was wand wasn’t relevant. Thanks in advance for any help!

You should have a certificate singing off the boiler installation. The person doing it has to be approved. It should confirm the details of the person who is registered to sign it off. Is that the same person who did the install or different? All the repairs should be done by them. As a dodgy boiler is a serious safety issue and it's not clear how your new problems are related I would pay someone else to do a proper report on the boiler including if the current problems are related to the installation. I would then take a formal route of writing to the first company about putting it right including trying to get someone independent to repair it. I think you could also get some intervention from whoever approved them for sign of although I've never had to do that. I think it's usually corgi or someone else registered you're looking for

Thank you for quick reply! I have a certificate of building regulation compliance from “Gas Safe” which was emailed to me a few weeks after the boiler was installed. I have no idea if the person named in the certificate is the young lad who actually installed the boiler but the company name is correct. I had considered getting another opinion earlier this year but am worried about throwing more good money after bad, especially when the workmanship is still under warranty.

Clearly showing my age yes it's Gas Safe I was thinking of. If you Google then there is a number where you can complain about an installation. They ask you to try and sort it with the company first but then they will offer an inspection. Id try to give them a call for some support in the first instance

I would call my home owner's insurance company and ask to talk to their legal department. A certain portion of legal advice and help is usually covered by them. Then ask them what route you should pursue to get the problem solved.
When legal departments begin to get involved, business owners decide to take complaints and problems seriously and seek prompt solutions.

I hope you get your boiler problem settled rapidly OP.

Ok, I have no gas age knowledge here but lots of experience with shonky trades.

It’s really good you have the work certificated.
this gives you some protection even if the youngster erroneously did your work whilst not sufficiently experienced.

Basicslly, you need to lay it on the line very heavily with the company. You’ve had a boiler for less than a year. It isn’t working now. You are worried the person who actually attended and fitted it is not registered gas safe and you will absolutely pursue that if the case and you are aware this would be a criminal offence. Sending an unqualified junior to the job without any supervision and sign off is a major fuck up on their part (if that is what happened -it’s actually unlawful not just bad practice). Id say You are giving them one last chance to come out and properly rectify the work ( sounds like a potential airlock or worse) otherwise you are contacting the installer scheme with concerns about work being done by non-licenced fitters. Give them a deadline of a couple of days and then report to gas safe.

*gas safe not gas age 🤦‍♀️

When you're bleeding them are you getting a lot of air out? You shouldnt really be getting any out now a year has passed.

This appears to be a simple heat only boiler i.e not a combi. Is that right? Is it pressurised or an old gravity fed system?

Its not obvious why your radiators would leak when he hasn't touched these. They would possibly leak if you were going from an unpressurised to a pressurised system but it seems theres been no change to that.

You were lied to about a 7 year old boiler being unrepairable. As long as it was otherwise OK any parts could have been replaced much cheaper than a whole new boiler.

I wonder if they flushed the system when fitting the new. They're meant to clan out sludge. DO you have a filter anywhere? When bleeding the water out is is clean or black?

Yes, lots of air. There has been air every time they've been bled since new boiler installation. There isn’t any sludge on bleeding, it’s clean, but as you might be able to see from the photos, the stuff leaking from the valves was dirty greenish.

It is a heat only boiler - essentially a like for like replacement for the old boiler (different make but same boiler type). I’m afraid I don’t know if it is pressurised - there is a water tank upstairs and the house is only 8 years old so I assume not an “old gravity fed system”? Not sure how I’d find out which type of system I have - sorry, not very technically minded!

I believe the system was flushed when it was installed as I seem to recall that being part of the numerous conversations the young lad had with his colleagues over the phone. There is a metal tube type thing over the top of the boiler which says “onyx magnetic filter”.

The only thing I’ve not mentioned so far which may or may not be relevant is that there was a debate about the correct boiler size for the house size/number of bathrooms. The company didn’t have in stock the correct size of Vaillant boiler (according to them) but said they’d supply the next size up at no extra cost and then would “turn it down”. I’m no expert but when I googled what size of boiler was right for the house size, it was my view that the smaller one would have been too small. The house is a 4 bed with 2 bathrooms upstairs and one downstairs toilet. Could the “turning down” have caused any issues? Sorry for non-technical terminology, this is how they described it to me!

size of boiler unlikely to be the issue. Dodgy installation much more likely. Get heavy with them. They are regulated as installers and gas stuff is serious -using inexperienced juniors 100% not allowed. Obviously he could be qualified yet incompetent but the suspicion here is he was just cheap and available :(

Is it pressurised? I.e. when you've bled the radiators I presume you have to add some water in using a filling loop or handles under the boiler to get the pressure back to 1. You will have a pressure gauge? As its a modern house I expect you have a pressurised system with a hot water tank like a Megaflow? Its not a combi if you have a tank.

Boilers have a power rating. I'm guessing yours is a 19kw?I t should say somewhere. As for turning it down, boilers are clever and modulate themselves. I Im not familiar with a pressurised heat only system which is what you have but when they say turn it down I can only think they mean turn the pump down. Where your hot water cylinder is, is there a pump? Pumps generally have 3 speeds, the higher the faster.

But TBH all of this is moot if things have started leaking that didnt previously leak. Hence i wonder if the pump speed is too high. Leaking green is just oxidisation I think. When they fill a system up, they should add some inhibitor to the system to prevent the water rusting up the radiators inside. I'd hope some has been added by now. Never heard of green or pink deposits outside. All that leaves the flue is gas.

That’s the odd thing about the pressure. There’s no visible pressure gauge on the boiler itself, only on the water tank - which as you say we have been told to keep at 1. The boiler only has a single tap type device accessible at the base so everything I have been googling hasn’t helped as they all talk about turning two taps. Unless I were to take the front of the boiler off (which obviously I won’t do), there aren’t any other screens to show pressure or taps/controls accessible to me.

Yes, the water tank does have a pump. The tank is a “santon premier plus” and the pump is “Grundfos Alpha 2” Usually there are green lights on the pump showing what I think must be the speed but it’s not lit up at all at the moment, presumably because the boiler isn’t operating.

There are two kw references on the sticker underneath the boiler. Not sure which of these you’ve asked about but it states : “Qnw = 25.7 kw” and “Pnw = 25.2 kw”.

Also just found the invoice which lists the following that answers some of the above questions. Thanks again for all the help!

-Supply & fit a 18kw heat only boiler with horizontal flue & 45 bends
-Supply & fit a magnetic system filter
-Alter & adapt pipework, connect boiler to existing condensate pipework
-Fill system, add inhibitor, commission & test

You make it sound as if an apprentice installed your boiler. Of course that's totally not ok. The name on the certificate signing it off should be the installer. Having an apprentice assist is fine. Please look up the business and engineer in the gassaferegister. It has photos. As you watched the installation you should recognize the engineer.

www.gassaferegister.co.uk/

My nephew did an apprenticeships in gas when he left school think he was 18.5 when he qualified

gas industry is massively regulated and I doubt very much a company would let on unqualified engineer work solo liability is enormous
so I would say he was inexperienced but qualified
leaks are common on works like this as ether the system wasn’t pressurised before or if it wasn’t when it’s drained and re pressurised / refilled it will leak at weak existing joints move due to the weight and pressure of the water being removed then reapplied
That isn’t anyone’s fault it’s one of those things
radiators are normally cold at bottom due to sludge in them
the only way to get rid of this is a power flush Big Machine that attaches to system and takes a few hours there’s no mention of this on your bill so I would presume it hasn’t been done that definitely would of been charged it’s a big process
Replacing the bleed valves are nothing to do with the boiler replacement that’s a separate issue swapped a boiler will not break your bleed valves

a quick google tells you fault code f23 means pump failed or problem with existing pipe work as there too much off a difference between the temperature off the outgoing water and the returning water indicating a problem or blockage in the pipe work/radiators in the house

@rwalker the OP says rads are cold at the top , not the bottom.

Some strange things.

Firstly to me a boiler should never need replacing after 7 years.

It is common to have a lot of air in the system after the boiler has been replaced/radiators fitted. Ideally the engineer should wait until it is all working properly, but often they are on very tight schedules. Normally repeated bleeding and checking the pressure and refilling where necessary does the trick.

You mention you can't find the pressure reading. I have a Valiant boiler and it has a pressure gauge on the digital readout. You need to press a few buttons to get to it, so a manual read is in order.

You say there is no pressure gauge on the boiler. but there is on the "water tank". This to me is unusual. I am wondering whether you have a secondary expansion vessel close to the tank, and it is in fact that that has failed. That might explain why if you can't find any other water leaks on the system (radiator valves) and the pressure is continuing to drop, as the water has to leak somewhere. Expansion vessels do have a habit of failing because they have a diagphram that perishes over time.

There is normally an overflow for the expansion vessel, so maybe if you do have one fitted you should check that and see whether water is leaking out of it.

And maybe post a picture of your water tank and associated equipment so people can have a look and see whether you do have an expansion vessel there.

If the pressure drop is being cause by water leaking from the radiators then you need to fix them.

Googling the error code says it's detecting a temp change in the flow and return pipes that is not right

Since you said you first had an F23 error which can be caused by an air lock amongst other reasons - and you could bleed rads again to see if it works

All the other reasons for causing either of these codes aren't fixable unless you are a heating engineer unfortunately

Sounds like the system has lost pressure. Go to YouTube where there are lots of videos on how to repressurise it yourself.

Thanks all for the helpful advice. An engineer (from the same company) came round this afternoon. After about 45 minutes he was ready to call time on it, and was saying we’d have to call in Vaillant under the guarantee. Before he left he wanted to check the immersion emergency water supply was working and in doing this he turned up the pump speed which then corrected the issue. At that point the boiler fired up and he concluded it must have been an airlock.

It seemed all the radiators were coming on but we didn’t have chance to check all of them and unfortunately after he’d left we found that three of them were completely cold. All of these are at the same side of the house on the ground floor, unsure if that is coincidental or not. So, will have to call them back out although thankfully the majority of the radiators and the hot water are back in operation. Not sure what the issue can be as he re-bled all of the radiators and all of them are definitely individually switched on.

Before he left, I cleared up the confusion about the pressure gauge and re-pressurisation. He confirmed on this type of boiler, there are no handles/taps or gauge on the boiler itself - this is done on the water tank/cylinder (sorry, not sure what else to call this from the poster that queried this terminology). So yesterday we did the right thing in bleeding the radiators and checking the pressure on the tank/cylinder (which was still at 1.5) and he said the airlock isn’t something we could have fixed ourselves.

Any insights as to what might be causing the three cold radiators appreciated! No doubt we will be charged a weekend call out fee for today and then whatever the follow up visit for the cold radiators will cost; which is quite frustrating with a brand new boiler.

Are you sure enough water is flowing into all your radiators so they are completely full? In my experience with a big old house and a quite old system it is often a problem of lack of topping up of water or lack of pressure. We often have to top up our boiler, especially if it has been turned down while away for a week or so.

Sorry, I’m not sure how I’d know there was/wasn’t water flowing into individual radiators? Perhaps the fact they are cold is evidence of that but I have no idea how to fix it, or even if I can?

The pressure is fine, all this was checked by the engineer and he bled every radiator. Just checked and it’s still at 1.5. Every other radiator in the house is getting fully hot, the three in question are completely cold.
Also, the house (and therefore the entire plumbing system - except the new boiler!) is only 8 years old.

are the radiators completely stone cold? They are either full of air (unlikely - usually warm at the bottom), or the outflow valve is closed (possible- this is the non-thermostatic one) or lastly, the pins in the thermostatic radiator valve are stuck closed. This often happens after a long period when the rads have been off like now, post-summer, and it is easy to fix yourself with a pair of pliers and a bit of care. If you’ve bled the other rads you can investigate and fix a stuck pin yourself. Craig on YouTube (forget surname, he was on big brother once upon a time!) has a great video on how to troubleshoot cold rads.

Am more concerned a heating engineer couldn’t work out why the heating system wasn’t working. That’s literally their only job (!). Useless. Sorry, no help but god honestly, these folks earn very handsomely :/

If this is the first time you've had them on did you turn them off on the TRVs at the end of winter and now turned them on? Sometimes the pin inside the TRV can get stuck? You can unscrew the top part of the TRV and gently pull on the pin to release it - that happened with half of my rads last year

I’d put money on the pins in the thermostatic radiator valves being stuck down. The TRV is just the thing that turns the temp up or down on the individual radiator, usually has a dial of (frozen symbol) to 5 or 6. They come off pretty easily (usually just a and then all you need to do is very gently manipulate the central pin with pliers, you kind of wiggle the side to side. DO NOT pull with pliers, or hit it with a hammer. This might bugger it up forever or the pin might fly out and you’ll have a fine spray of dirty radiator water all over the shop.

Sorry typos as on phone: hopefully you get my drift