Hi all,

Struggling with my Vaillant Boiler, a TurboMax Plus (92000 btu i think) installed late 2002. About the same time we finally moved into this average 3 bed semi, we kept the old rads, 4 rads upstairs and 4 down.

Gas bill for the last quarter has come out at £179. For last winter I was dumped with a bill off £421 for Nov03-Jan04 and I suspect the same again in the next 3 months. That's just too high.

During the summer(!) period (May04-Jul04) the bill was a measley £75. I've changed to the cheapest supplier 5 months ago.

The only other gas appliance is a Stoves DO Cooker which is used but not excessively.

A shower runs of the Vaillant, used everyday nearly but 20 mins max. Water pressure is good, HW is...ermm...hot!. I had a plumber out to check the rads, he balanced them and said they are working fine. The pressure on the boiler has to be increased every so often, plumber showed me how to do it by turning a screw and turning it back. Does that indicate a leak? Have to do that every 3 weeks or so.

The plumber said I should keep the CH and HW dials on the boiler turned to MAX. However temperature control at the rads is very poor, the rads stay cold until I turn to the III setting and suddenly they get too hot, there's no comfort zone. Only way to regulate rads temperature is to turn them all to the V (maximum) setting and use the CH setting on the boiler to set the overall house temp. Is this a stupid way to do it?

Do I need to replace the rads? A vaillant engineer serviced the boiler last year and also this october 04, he says the boiler is working fine.

When CH is on I have noticed the boiler is constantly on, stops for about 3 minutes every half an hour then kicks off again. Is this correct behaviour, for the boiler to be on nearly 55 mins out of every hour?

Regards, Hasan Zehn.