Help! Gas man needed
 

I have an Optima 701 combi boiler and the pilot light went out earlier tonight but for the life of me I cannot get it to come back on.

The instructions say I should set it to 'constant hot water and heating', wait about 3 minutes and press the gas control button to fire up the pilot light but it just won't light. I can hear it clicking as if it's trying to light but I've left it clicking away for about 15 minutes now and it isn't happening.

Anyone?

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

Probably gonna cost you. You shouldnt fiddle around with a gas appliance if your not Corgi registered. Nasty things can happen and it against the gas regulations for obvious safety regulations.

Difficult to say but if the light went out and wont relight, could be as simple as a thermocouple, or as complex as replacing it's innards. Sometimes it can be a safety measure if the pressure in the pipework is too low for the boiler to operate safely.

At least the weather is getting warmer, so you can manage without heating. But watch out for the cold showers :Yikes:

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

My gas meter is playing up and the supply went off, that's why the pilot light went out.

Gee thanks......

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

Could be as simple as the ignition needing replacing.However you unfortunately need a gas man for that.Sorry!


have a :group: to keep warm.

Incog.

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

Right, the button to light the pilot has now been wedged in place for almost 10 minutes and it is just not lighting, just clicking away....

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

are you sure the gas supply to the boiler is actually ok, Russ?

if even the pilot won't light then it sounds like you have no gas?

The pilot on my combi has sometimes been blown out by high winds, but holding in the big button & then doing the ignition has usually sorted it ?

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

OK thanks to all - I've figured it out. My gas meter keeps resetting itself or something like that and I need to reboot it before it will deliver any gas. I sorted that out and the place is now warm :D

Grrrrr @ Britsh Gas.

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

- have you run adaware or spybot on your gas meter? ;) :D

- consider getting a service contract for the boiler, we did & ours has been pretty much rebuilt over the last 15 years, on a parts & labour free deal?

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

always the same isnt it, reboot it and things will be ok. Now where have i heard that before?

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

Agree 100% :tu: Mine is with British Gas.

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

15 years at how much a month? must total over £2000, WOW id want 2 complete new installeations for that money (including radiators)

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

You must have seen lots of heating cowboys at those prices. Either that or your house is the size of Stu's shed.

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

same here, they have been brilliant, they turn up with a laptop loaded with a CD of your boiler specs, so the right parts get ordered, and once locked into a problem, their tech's are really good, we've had them offer to come round before we go to work, etc.

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

what price would you put on disruption - you can renew everything you have & get it 'warrantied' as often as you want, I prefer to pay to 'love the one I am with'

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

Any chance of getting a taper in to get it lit?

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

Most modern balanced flue boilers are room sealed. Fresh air for combustion is pulled in through one channel of the flue, whilst exhast gasses are expelled through the other channel of the flue.

If the boiler isn't room sealed, i.e. it is open to the room itself (such that you can stick a taper or other light in), you need to ensure the room itself has proper permanent ventilation (an air grille that cannot be blocked - an openable window is not enough) otherwise you run a risk of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

How does that work when I've got an aga ....'cos I can take the little glass window off and light it with a taper:confused:

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

I think "cookers" dont need permanent ventilation, as the theory is they aren't on long enough to use up the air in a room. However the aga includes a boiler so it should have permanent ventilation. Is there a grille or something under the floor, or behind a kitchen cabinet?

Perhaps the removable / replaceable glass area is too small to constitute a breach of the room seal?

As far as I recall (and I'm not a gas engineer, just a surveyor who has to watch out for possible issues), gas appliances except cookers, that are not room sealed need permanent ventilation of the room.

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

JOOI, my GCH (Worcester Bosch 2400 boiler, 4 rads) cost £2,300. But there's no way I'd pay the price BG want for their service contracts!

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

I'm not a Corgi or a Gas engineer... and neither of them could fix my boiler when it broke.
(So I didnt have a callout charge to pay).

I had a similar problem to Russ, the pilot went out & would not light, although the Gas supply was OK.

In the end I noticed that the fan was not turning as it should & hence no extraction was happening so no air was being bought into the unit.

With a bit of electrical tracing, I found that the relay on the control board had badly corroded contacts.

Replacing that & it sprang back into life, only to die the same way again three years later. So this time when I replaced the relay I also added some extra circuitry to reduce the arcing when it operated.

Its been fine for years now, although I suppose it could do with a service/cleanout.

Reading the installation manual, its actually quite amazing how simple the things actually are & understandable in thier operation. So the monopoly (OK, I mean "law") on "Corgi engineers only" fixing your boilers doesnt always mean that they can.

How come you had to reboot your gas meter? how on earth does it work? I have never heard of a Gas meter that has the slightest possibility of needing owt like that. But then mines an old model.

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

it'll probably be a dirty or knackered thermocouple.

Occasionally you can clean these (if you can get to them).
I'd advise getting a corgi registered guy out though, it may be a serious problem.

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

:rofl:
You rebooted your gas meter?
Which version of Windows does it run?

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

I know Mr Gates keeps claiming everything should be running a version of windows, but that is really extracting the michael. :D

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

Methinks we need pictures of this Gas meter so that we can compare them to pictures of Stuarts shed.

I wonder if there is a www.readersgasmeters.com website?

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

In our house the gas meter (and leccy) are prepay, and have some basic software on it that interacts with keycards so we know how much credit we have and it shuts off when we run out of credit.
It has crashed on us once before and cut off our gas supply. It compleltly hard locked up and wouldnt respond to any commands.
We called up transco and within a couple of hours someone came out and rebooted the thing and off we went. response was good, engineer friendly and best of all its was free of charge !
If your still having trouble with your meter and supply stuff it might be worth giving them a ring :-)

K

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

Some kind of Windows Embedded ... was there a BSOD on the readout? Or a little message saying 'this gas meter has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down'?

:disturbd:

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

Hehe, that reminds me - there's this huge display screen in Cardiff city centre and more often than not, I'll walk past and see the "this program has caused an illegal operation and will be shut down" dialog box. :D

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

Cheeky yound whippersnapper!! 'Reboot' was the term the bloke used from the British gas helpline! Still, it worked :clap:

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

Methinks its actually a hardware "reset" rather than a reboot. :D

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

What the technical approach - Hit it with a hammer :Yikes:

Re: Help! Gas man needed
 

Ahem, a cautionary tale...! :D

http://www.iankitching.me.uk/humour/hippo/gas.html