short version

Do condensing boilers condense all the time, and if so do they always emit a
plume of vapour whilst they are doing so??

long version

We have finaly got our boiler replaced in the bungalow we're renting, it
died on the 22nd of feb this year, someone was sent to look at it, dead main
board, uneconomical to repair, quoted for a top of the range workie bosch
jobbie at 1600 squids, so i wasnt surprised when they never came back to fit
it,

another plumber was booked to come and quote, phoned us up and arranged a
time and date, but never turned up, and we had nowt but excuses from the
managment company, in june they told us 'it's getting warmer now, so you
dont really need heating do you'
yes i suppose we could keep wrapping up in blankets and heating just one
room with an electric heater, but we would like to have hot water available
on tap, instead of from the kettle, which can't be used for the shower which
is a mains hot and cold fed off the combi.

complained, got CAB involved, a soliciters letter sent, got nowhere, was
ready to find somehwere else to live.... which isnt that easy, finding a
landlord who will accept LHB, a dog and 4 fancy rats isnt easy, took us 5
months to find this place.

Anyway, out of the blue we got a letter from another managment company
telling us they had taken over from the old un,
so i reported the boiler, someone came out the next day and confirmed it was
beyone economical repair, and arranged for a new un to be fitted,
week later it happened, plumber bods who came were the same uns who were to
have come back in may, he'd recieved an e-mail the day after he'd phoned us
telling him to cancel the job and not to tell us!!!

apparantly they are owed the best part of 10 grand from the old managment
company,
and to top it all, our landlord didnt even know our boiler was broken, old
managment company never told him, apparantly there was some fiddle going on,
this plumber has fitted new boilers to about 25 other properties owned by
our landlord, they all had the same, managment company werent telling the
landlord and giving excuses for not sorting it... of course they would never
tell us who the actual landlord was... data protection and all that they
would say.

we were told who the landlord was by the new managment company straight
away, they say it's a legal right for us to know who actually owns the
property, even if a managment company is used,

Anyway, we now have a ravenheat 85T 28KW combi, they had to put it in a new
location as they only had a horizontal flue kit for it, and they had come
down from liverpool, but tht free's up the rest of the old airing cupboard
nicely, would be great if we could remove the wall as it is built into the
kitchen,

So took them quite a bit longer than they expected, but it's all in and
working, we have a warm house at last and can use the house's shower again
(had been using the shower in my motorhome, which usually stays at my
parents house, if we didnt have that we'd have been well and truly stuffed)

anyway, when the boiler first starts up, after a few seconds of the burner
coming on, you get a plume of vapour from the exhaust, which i know is
normal,
this plume will keep being emited for about 10 minutes, then it'll stop, now
i dunno if that's cos the boiler is going out of condensing mode, or it was
like petrol cars exhaust on a cold morning, lots of vapour untill the system
has warmed up.

the boiler's controlls are set on the 'super efficiant condensing mode'
positions, and the burner has been on high for a good hour... having to heat
the house up from scratch, it's now modulating down as we're aproaching the
set temperature on my wirless room stat,

we have no TRV's, and ATM all rad valves are fully open,

oh, anyone want to buy any parts for a halstead finest gold combi boiler,
had a brand new fan in november last year, so only been used for 3 months,
got everything except the main board as that's knacked.

On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:31:03 +0100, gazz wrote:

Anyway, we now have a ravenheat 85T 28KW combi

Oh, dear: no-expense-spared job then :-/


anyway, when the boiler first starts up, after a few seconds of the
burner coming on, you get a plume of vapour from the exhaust, which i
know is normal,
this plume will keep being emited for about 10 minutes, then it'll stop,
now i dunno if that's cos the boiler is going out of condensing mode, or
it was like petrol cars exhaust on a cold morning, lots of vapour untill
the system has warmed up.

In this relatively warm weather that's not too surprising: as the
readiators warm up and the water returning to the boiler gets warmer it'll
condense less, and the proportion of water vapour in the flue gases will
drop to the point that they no longer condense further in the outside air.
They'll still be condensing in the boiler itself. In colder weather the
small amount of water vapour that escapes in the flue gas will be more
prone to condense as it hits colder outside temperatures (same way the
water vapour in your breath condenses in cold weather).

the boiler's controlls are set on the 'super efficiant condensing mode'
positions, and the burner has been on high for a good hour... having to heat
the house up from scratch, it's now modulating down as we're aproaching the
set temperature on my wirless room stat,

we have no TRV's, and ATM all rad valves are fully open,

Not to standards: controls should by law (building regs) have been
upgraded to include at least some TRVs



--
John Stumbles -- http://yaph.co.uk

I'm more non-competitive than you

On 15 Oct 2009 20:41:19 GMT, YAPH wrote:

as the readiators warm up and the water returning to the boiler gets
warmer it'll condense less, and the proportion of water vapour in the
flue gases will drop ...

Hum, so with a fixed amount of water vapour in the flue gases from
the burner less is condensed out and the amount of water vapour in
the exit gases also falls?

Whether you get a visible plume or not depends mainly on the exit gas
temperature and the external temperature. Does the cooling of the
exit gases by the colder external air bring them below the dew point.
The more condesation you get in the boiler the cooler the exit gases
will be, thus more likely to get a visible plume as they don't have
to be cooled so far to get below the dew point.

Not to standards: controls should by law (building regs) have been
upgraded to include at least some TRVs

Do the building regs have any force of law? Also I didn't think the
building regs specified TRVs. Only some means of stopping the boiler
short cycling once the demand has been met.

--
Cheers
Dave.

Anyway, we now have a ravenheat 85T 28KW combi, they had to put it in a
new location as they only had a horizontal flue kit for it, and they had
come down from liverpool, but tht free's up the rest of the old airing
cupboard nicely, would be great if we could remove the wall as it is built
into the kitchen,

Well as its a Ravenheat I expect you'll be seeing plenty more of the
plumbers !!

"YAPH" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:31:03 +0100, gazz wrote:

Anyway, we now have a ravenheat 85T 28KW combi

Oh, dear: no-expense-spared job then :-/

well the landlord has had to pay for over 30 of his houses to have new
boilers at the same time due to the last managment company for some reason
not telling him, but i'm not fussed, it's a damn sight better than the
halstead thing that was there before,

On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:36:32 +0100, Dave Liquorice wrote:

Do the building regs have any force of law? Also I didn't think the
building regs specified TRVs. Only some means of stopping the boiler
short cycling once the demand has been met.

IANAL but AIUI building regs do have force of law.

Somewhere they specify that controls must be improved when a boiler is
replaced, and I'm pretty sure they do specify at least some TRVs - as well
as boiler interlock.

--
John Stumbles -- http://yaph.co.uk

militant pacifist

It happens that YAPH formulated :
Somewhere they specify that controls must be improved when a boiler is
replaced, and I'm pretty sure they do specify at least some TRVs - as well
as boiler interlock.

I wasn't aware of that, could you provide a reference?

--
Regards,
Harry (M1BYT) (L)
http://www.ukradioamateur.co.uk

On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:49:41 +0100, Harry Bloomfield wrote:

It happens that YAPH formulated :
Somewhere they specify that controls must be improved when a boiler is
replaced, and I'm pretty sure they do specify at least some TRVs - as well
as boiler interlock.

I wasn't aware of that, could you provide a reference?

ADL1 35 b. refers to controls meeting Domestic Heating Compliance Guide,
which seems - in a contorted sort of way[1] - to call for them.


[1] not least in the sense that the relevant part of the PDF is oriented
sideways so you get a crick in your neck trying to read it :-(


--
John Stumbles -- http://yaph.co.uk

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.