Worcester Bosch Greenstar Ri suddenly cut out. Help?!

[SeLHopeful2024]

So, been on our new house a month, heating and hot water has worked fine on a Nest thermostat control set up the whole time.
Has been working today fine, until now!

All of a sudden, the boiler (kitchen) and hot water tank (upstairs) both try to kick in when I turn the thermostat up or the hot water on, but after a few seconds it's like the pump or what ever it is runs out of energy and cuts out.

We have a blue light in the centre of the boiler (solid, not flashing which the instruction manual suggests indicates a fault).
The green light comes on as it tries to fire up, but as the pump type noise dwindles, the light goes out.

Anyone out there this time of night who has any suggestions?
Helpline is closed still 7am.
Reset suggested in the manual hasn't fixed it.
Stressing my little one is going to be freezing through the night.

It looks like it was installed in 2017, so thought it should be OK for a bit longer!

Thanks for any help you can give.

If it's cold where you are it could be a frozen condensate pipe - if you googled you'll find out more. I had one that froze up regularly until I rerouted the pipe inside. As soon as it freezes the pipe gets blocked and the boiler cuts out.

I would say can you upload a picture of the front of the boiler - it might have info which someone can interpret, but not sure images can be posted at night?

Sorry, I can't help, but please don't worry about your little one overnight, most people don't have the heating on at all in the night anyway and nowhere in the UK is going to be really cold tonight. Hope you get it sorted in the morning.

Have you heard any noise from your pipework or radiators? Either way, it’s usually worth bleeding your radiators.

Check the water pressure in the boiler, if it’s a fairly new boiler any air trapped in the system may have settled and the system pressure has dropped.
There is a removable flap at the bottom of the boiler, if you pull it down the should be a lever you pull down to recharge the system the gauge will show where you need to fill it to.
I will try and find a diagram for you.

You could try this to see if it helps.

See what error code you are getting from this list.

https://heatable.co.uk/boiler-advice/worcester-bosch-error-codes

https://www.worcester-bosch.co.uk/support/literature/download/6720813340
If this is your boiler then the instruction for pressure system are on page 9.
Have you tried the reset button.
Otherwise is there a problem with your Hive.
Worcester Bosch are really reliable but the pump and fans can fail ( wear and tear) but are worth having fixed.
We have just had a new Worcester Bosch to replace a 19yr old one. The new one has a 10 yr guarantee as opposed to warranty. If you have had the boiler serviced annually you may find that it is still under guarantee.
Our old one had one new pump in 19yrs but failed last month. It was knackered. I would think an 8 yr old boiler was still ok unless it’s never been serviced.

If it's a Worcester Bosch, it has a10 year guarantee. So contact a WB heating engineer in the morning.

I didn't discover they had 10 year guarantees until I'd spent £500 getting my five year old one repaired 😭

Just reread your op and you have a water tank so unless it’s a closed system then it should automatically repressure, worth a look though.
It will probably be the pump in which case you need to contact a heating engineer.
Worcester Bosch do have an accredited list of engineers. They also have a fastrack service.
From recent experience it takes a while for modern well insulated houses to really cool down. We had to wait for a week for a new boiler to be fitted ( had to have a special flue fitted so next day service not possible and then the weekend got in the way). We didn’t freeze, I bought a small fan heater and we just heated the living room. We don’t have heating on in the bedrooms so just used a xtra bedding. Dog was also treated to a couple of nights on our bed.
If your hot water tank has a back up electric heating element then you may be ok for hot water.

@maximist I don't think it's cold enough to freeze.
I'm in South East London, so about 8°C outside.
I'm a northern gone soft, so was probably a bit melodramatic in my post.
Just finding the house cold and draughty at the best of times.

Thank you. I am just panicking unnecessarily really. He runs hotter than me, so he's going to be fine.

No noises etc. All been working perfectly.
I have called the national gas phone number to see if there's a local outage.
They said they will send someone within 2 hours....wasn't expecting that!

Thank you. Unfortunately we are not particularly well insulated (as we are discovering) with a freezing downstairs. Upstairs is OK.
I do have all of the installation invoices, certificates etc so I will start by calling those people first in the morning.

Just feeling very sorry for myself at the thought of more bills.
Nothing is as we thought when we looked. Classic first time buyer and didn't see some stuff that's ended up costing lot more than expected.

Oh gosh. That's such a shame.
Thank you for making me aware.

Do you think they still stand even if I wasn't the original purchaser?

Just checked on the WB guarantee portal @saraclara ...my serial number is not showing. I don't think the previous home owner registered it 😟

Contact Worcester Bosch. I have an online account with that when I just checked still has my old boiler on it which was registered by the original engineer. That was back in 2007 so your boiler may have been registered but to the previous owner. The customer service team will b able to check it for you.
My new boiler was registered by the engineer not me.
The guarantee is only valid if you have annual service.
The engineers who fitted my new boiler quoted £90 a year for servicing which isn’t astronomical. I was paying a local engineer about !60 a year pre Covid. We have had a lot going on over the last two years so forgot the service however we were aware that the boiler was not going to last much longer. I was hoping it would make it through the winter but it has been colder this year where we are.
It was actually 18 yrs old but still a good age.

The new one has its own smart thermostat that is Worcester Bosch’s own tech. One of the planned updates is to connect it to Alexa. It is much simpler to use than our previous app. It’s like a mini iPad. You do have to plug it in but it can be wired in like a traditional thermostat. It’s not battery operated so you don’t have to charged it and you can plug it in anywhere.

The app on the phone is identical and when I leave the house it reminds me so I can switch off the heating.
It was really simple to set up, once I realised it didn’t like being next to the wifi router. It also has an energy use feature. You can enter your gas tariff and then see how much the heating and water cost daily. An average shower costs about 16p but the latest cold spell has cost us around £3 a day on heating. We are retired so the heating is on all day.

Do check if it's the type that needs repressurizing, that's a general service/maintenance thing rather than a breakdown.

Also, when was it last serviced? If a year or so ago, could be a drainage container or something like that needs emptying. Also, the system gets repressurized at that time although we have to top ours up about ten months later. Anything below .7 bar here and we top up. If it's close to zero, that's your problem.

Our engineer said one thing that can go early is tge fan, around 9-11 years. For some reason if they get past that, they'll probably last the lifetime.

Thank you. It does sound like a fan kicks in, struggles and dies.

Left it off last night, but no different today.
I can't see any way to repressurise unless I start unscrewing the boiler- will call WB before I start doing that.
Looking at the instructions, we don't have that function.

Bit worried the previous people didn't have a service. We were told they had,but no evidence provided.
That was on our list of jobs to do, but as it was working we had been dealing with other issues first.

The Worcester Bosch boilers only have a 10 year warantee if they are serviced by an accredited engineer each year; and 5 year one if serviced each year by a non-accredited one (we were told this last year when we had a new one installed).

Just saw that you are in SE London. We always found South London Heating (in Penge) super responsive when we lived in that area.

Don't unscrew the boiler!

Your boiler is a regular boiler not a combi boiler so there isn't a pressure gauge. Loss of pressure affects combi and system boilers. Not Regulars.

Can you use your cylinder immersion for hot water in the meantime ?

Definitely call worcester bosch to check the guarantee. Mine was under guarantee even though the serial number wasn't recognised on their website (I think their website is pretty rubbish, but they are quite good on the phone ) .

You mention the previous owner didn't supply proof of service - that's odd, usually conveyancing solicitors insist on proof.
There may be proof in the benchmark/ servicing page of the manual. Have they left you a manual for the boiler? Usually in the back few pages there is a service log - hopefully that has been filled in ?

If boiler is no longer under guarantee, Worcester do their own fixed price breakdown call. I'm not sure how much it is nowadays but it's worth a call. A worcester bosch engineer will have the parts on his van . (Saves a local plumber coming out and then having to go away to order the part and come back)

If you find the boiler isn't covered check if you have home emergency cover with your house insurance.

Sounds like condensate pipe is blocked. Call a local gas engineer

No it doesn’t, sadly. You could try and argue it if you’ve got a full service history, we did, but they wouldn’t allow us to use it. Unless it varies between models - ours was a Combi so no water tank here.

Ours did this once, we got it back on and working, and it struggled through another 4 months before randomly going fully kaput in early January. Not the best time of the year, but the new boiler is a lot more efficient and the house is a lot warmer!

You may be able to repressurize it, although expect to need to do it every morning as it deteriorates, if it’s the same problem as ours.

You're right. No warranty on it. I can't prove a full service history.
WB can get someone out for £300+ but if the issue is any other part of the system they won't fix.

Called installation company who said to email to arrange a survey and warranty.

Just want a fix at this stage.
Didn't expect a breakdown at 8yrs old.

Can't even find that.
All I can see outside is the flu.

Need to find someone local now. Not got connections yet.