Mattg4321

Gas prices have come down as the Ukraine war has progressed. Yet electricity prices have not followed to the same extent. If it was gas causing the price to stay higher this wouldn’t be the case.

So gas is barely more expensive than 8 years ago, yet electricity is fairly significantly higher, and was so before Ukraine war. Wonder why on earth that could be.

Source for that?! The only remotely viable way is nuclear, but for some reason those in charge would rather pursue their visions of utopia.

Possibly. But nobody has a crystal ball and experts/general consensus been completely wrong time and time again throughout history. The problem is that the choice is between carrying on as we are and doing our best to reduce emissions where possible, or net zero and near complete deindustrialisation. Renewables/air travel/heating our homes/working more than walking distance from our houses/car ownership including EV. None of them are compatible with net zero, unless we agree that offshoring our emissions doesn’t count - which is of course ludicrous. Whether or not you agree with the idea of man made climate change - I’m still somewhat on the fence - the ‘solutions’ are nonsense spun up by the very few people who will benefit from them.

Agree with that, but how many can you do that with anyway? Hager. Starbreaker. Some of the brands under the Schneider umbrella. I’m struggling after that.

Nothing wrong with those mods imo. Fusebox is good stuff and a decent price. I use loads of it and have it in my own house. Money no object, Crabtree starbreaker is the best consumer unit (domestic) imo. Hager is also decent, but the slant on the breakers is no better than Fusebox (ie. Acceptable, but not perfect). Hager have just massively reduced RCBO prices, so obviously feeling the presence of Fusebox! Goes to show how much they were making before…

Nonsense. Inflation is 35% over the last 10 years. As per the Bank of England website. Energy price inflation is at least 3 times that. It’s the road to ruin. As someone else just said, cheap and reliable energy is the main reason living standards have rapidly improved over the past 200 years. Without it - a catastrophe that would make WW2 look like child’s play. As for the last comment 🙄

So there we have it. The thin end of the wedge as many of us predicted. Lucky I can afford PV and an inverter that accepts a generator input. Not sure how everyone firing up their own generators helps with reducing C02 though? Mad max here we come.

Agree almost entirely with @ProDave If carbon dioxide is really the biggest problem that we face and worth spending enormous amounts of money on (not inequality, lower living standards, crumbling public services and infrastructure, inflation, social cohesion etc etc) then why are we not investing heavily in nuclear. We all know that renewables can’t operate reliably in isolation. Also worth noting that in the last decade my electricity cost per unit has gone up by over 100%, with the standing charge going up by even more - far above the rate of inflation. I thought renewables were meant to be cheaper?!! No doubt some will blame Ukraine war for this as the cost of gas has risen, but we have mountains of gas of our own that we for some unknown reason refuse to extract. Far better for the planet to import LNG from Qatar and the US - make it make sense.

At a guess, when you get a restriction, the pressure created by the pump causes the water to take the path of least resistance - up the Vent pipe.

Heat exchanger wasn’t totally blocked on my boiler either. Just about heated the cylinder and got the rads hot for 20 mins or so, then went lukewarm. The USP3 is a very common pump. It won’t be the sole cause of pumping over on a system configuration and that has never previously pumped over imo. I think it’s pretty well nailed on that there’s some sort of obstruction/blockage on the primary circuit. All only in my opinion obviously.

There’s no doubt it’s a slight risk. The part could be damaged, perhaps even by plumber upon fitting - who will blame the part probably. However, if you can find someone sensible to fit it, it’s a risk worth taking imo. Those boilers are fairly bulletproof otherwise in my experience (had one in my old house for 9 years - was 14 years old in total when I sold - zero problems) and your only other option is new boiler if the heat exchanger is indeed blocked.

This is still sounding so much like my situation from a few years back. I also changed the pump as a first move. I also then cut the H section out and found it clear. I removed the mid position valve and found that clear. I then decided it was very likely the heat exchanger in the boiler as it was unlikely to be anything else stopping good circulation around the primary circuit. Also open vented systems suffer with sludge build up, and I had no magnaclean. It’s interesting that my boiler is also the same as yours. You could just replace everything to fix as plumber 3 wants, but seems wrong to me. If I was you then I’d check the ‘H’ section of pipework and if it’s clear I’d be getting the same refurbed heat exchanger that has cured my problem. Assuming you can find a plumber willing to spend a couple of hours fitting it for you that is. I twisted a mates arm (quite hard it must be said!) £150 for him and £80 for the heat exchanger- which according to him looked new.

Threatening it yes, but dates in the near future? Not that I know of. 30th June 2025 is apparently the date. To my knowledge they’ve not given a firm date before, that has then passed with the service still operational. We’ll see I suppose.

Haha LW only!

Radio 4 (which the teleswitch signal runs from) due to be switched off in June, so not too long.

Am I correct in thinking that pump over isn’t the only problem (symptom) here? The original (and also current) problem is lack of circulation and radiators not getting hot enough. Is that still the case?

I can’t see a low loss header in any of the pictures? I’m no plumber (electrician), but I’ve wired hundreds of boiler systems and investigated a lot of faults - although mostly electrical. Seen tens of UPS3 pumps on standard Y/S plan vented systems and never heard of one being the sole cause of pumping over. I pass the plumbing faults over to the plumbers I work alongside, but usually like to find out the cause once they’ve solved, for future reference. Pumping over very often seems to be a blockage and poor circulation. Blocked heat exchanger in boiler/blocked pipework usually where the close coupled tees where F&V pipes are, especially if this is one of those Myson aerjec things. Hopefully a plumber will see this and post soon

Definitely a box ticking exercise The only way it will get checked is if someone complains and the planners send someone out to look. Our tree protection plan including ramming scaffold tubes into the ground around the tree, with a barrier attached to it. No machinery or materials needed to go near the tree, so would’ve been more damage caused by following the plan. It got ignored.

Process of elimination. It generally let enough heat through to do the DHW - especially in summer. Think it used to start playing up after boiler had been running a bit. Something moving/expanding I guess, then boiler started cycling. I cut the old heat exchanger open and it was full of c&@p

Exactly what I did. My array won’t generate enough to need going above a 3.68kW inverter, but I’ve gone for 5.5kW at almost no extra cost and a bit of G99 aggro

The other thing to consider with a 3.68kW inverter and DC battery storage is that 3.68kW will be the most it will be able to supply to the house with any balance made up from the grid. So it wouldn’t be able to run a double oven with both oven elements heating for example.

Pretty well known that restricted flow can cause system to pump over into feed and expansion tank. Just in case it’s the same problem and you have a friendly heating engineer who will spend a couple of hours fitting this rather than sell you a new boiler, I’ll leave this here. 3.5 years on, mine still running well. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/384909057365?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=QR3vSnEVRH6&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=088jx6SbToG&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Is the boiler a Greenstar ‘Ri’? That’s what I have, so probably wouldn’t be surprising if it’s the same thing

Had a similar problem and eventually found it was a blocked heat exchanger on my heat only boiler. Bought reconditioned heat exchanger off eBay for £75 and got my friendly plumber to fit! Also sealed the system and pressurised only to just under 1 bar to reduce chances of leaks. This stopped air being drawn in and greatly reduces sludge build up too. Best thing we did. As above, does it happen when only DHW calling, as it should be flying round there? Although this can be tricky to work out as if it’s a partial blockage like mine was it appears to work on DHW as there’s little enough resistance in that circuit to get a reasonable flow