|
Posted to uk.d-i-y
|
|
|
Cold weather condensing boiler breakdowns x 2 Frozen condensate pipes
In article ,
(A.Lee) writes:
cynic wrote:
Ho hum - went shopping this morning and noticed my neighbour had a
plumber/heating installers van outside. When I returned said van had
gone and neighbour looked distinctly cold. On speaking to him it
transpired installer knew nothing about the insides of the boiler
despite having installed and "comissioned" it. Since he could not fix
it he departed.
We had very severe frost last night so I enquired if there was an ice
plug in the condensate outlet. Neighbour got ladder out to look and it
turned out there was. Soon neighbour had kettle out and a warm house
soon after.
Do some pipes constantly 'dribble' out then?
My Keston does. It's slightly warm*, so it's not going to freeze
unless there's a long run of exposed outside pipework. In my case,
it has about a metre of 32mm plastic, before it enters the stack.
Instructions did say not to use the 21.5mm pipework outside, but
I do see this quite often when looking at other installations.
It's never frozen, but I did have a similar effect when the drain
hole from the heat exchanger got blocked with some crud, and it
started filling with water until it blocked the flue outlet enough
to stop it lighting. It has a detector on the drain pipe backing
up, but that's after the heat exchanger drain hole, so it doesn't
detect that until it prevents combustion.
Many years ago, I plumbed in a small portable dehumdifier, which
trickles out condensate. I made up a length of thin heater wire,
by threading a length of resistance wire down about 6m of thin
PTFE sleeving (which turned out to be really difficult), and
threaded this, doubled back on itself, inside the 3m of external
plastic hose. Selected a transformer voltage so it was heated
at about 18W, and connected it to an outside frost-stat. That
never froze. (This has been decommissioned now, because I collect
the condensate water for some plants which can't handle tap
water, and for ironing.)
* I have my boiler set very low - about 45C flow. With more normal
boiler temperatures, the condensate is going to be hotter - I
suspect about same as the return water temperature. However, with
the boiler set very low, I am going to be generating more condensate
than most.
--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]
|