I've just moved into a new flat which, unlike every other place I've ever lived, has a hot water heater tank. The problem is, the hot water is essentially a trickle. I can't see a pressure gauge on the tank, and have no idea what the two controls on the right do (though they do have pressure markings).
Is the pressure of the hot water a trickle everywhere in the house or just upstairs (if you have an upstairs)?
As a digression, how were you getting hot water elsewhere if not from the boiler? Central heating needs either a gas or ground source heat pump electric system.
>>2582 >Is the pressure of the hot water a trickle everywhere in the house or just upstairs (if you have an upstairs)?
Just one floor; everywhere. It takes over five minutes to fill the sink with hot water.
>As a digression, how were you getting hot water elsewhere if not from the boiler? Central heating needs either a gas or ground source heat pump electric system.
I'm not sure I understand the question. In my previous gaffs, it's been a gas-powered boiler that presents hot water on demand, and the same for the central heating system.
My current flat, however, has an (electrically, I suppose) heated hot water storage tank (as in the photo), and electric heater in each of the rooms. Not that they'll be needed, it's hotter than the surface of the sun in here. Top floor, innit.
This looks like the best thread for my DIY problem. To answer OP's question nearly four years after he asked it, I bet your diverter valve was broken. Failing that, you had a blocked pipe. If the taps made loud noises, it was an air lock. I know these things now that I have a similar problem.
My heating is an open vented system, so it's different from OP's in that I have a hot water tank in a cupboard which has a black box on the shelf above it, and water goes into the tank from the box. But now, I too have no hot water. Cold water is fine, so I don't have no water, and the cold water briefly comes out of the hot taps so they aren't blocked, plus it is both my house's hot taps so they won't both have got blocked at the same time. The water splutters out of the hot taps, then slows to a trickle. There are no loud banging noises so I am confident it's not an air lock. Central heating still works so it's not the boiler. And, most interestingly of all, all the pipes coming out of the hot water tank feel hot too, so I think that means nothing is broken.
I paid a guy to fix a different valve for my heating about three months ago, so I really hope it's not another valve that's broken. I have a guy coming on Monday to look, but if I can figure it out before then, I can cancel that and save myself around £350. There's a tap going from the black cold water box (the storage cistern) into the hot water tank, and this appears to be jammed in an off position. I have tried wrestling it open, but there's no way it will have been open before. I guess potentially, the heating guy three months ago jammed it shut and I have just gradually been draining my hot water tank, but I thought they had technology to stop them from running out of water.
>>3160 >There's a tap going from the black cold water box (the storage cistern) into the hot water tank, and this appears to be jammed in an off position. I have tried wrestling it open, but there's no way it will have been open before. I guess potentially, the heating guy three months ago jammed it shut and I have just gradually been draining my hot water tank, but I thought they had technology to stop them from running out of water.
The black cold water tank in the loft should have 2 pipes, the cold water goes into the top, and then another pipe or two out of the bottom that feeds the hot water tank.
If they shut the pipe going into the cold water tank, your system would have worked fine as the tank slowly emptied then you suddenly lose pressure, but if they'd shut the pipe going out of the cold water tank into the hot water tank you would have little to no pressure on your taps, and if you carried on using it anyway once the hot water tank started to empty it would overheat and shut the boiler off.
If they're just draining the hot water tank to change a valve, they wouldnt need to shut off the valve feeding the hot water tank, but they probably shut it off by mistake looking for the right valve.
But also be careful because often the same pipes will have multiple valves in different places so it might be a different one closed causing the problem to the one you're looking at.
>If they're just draining the COLD water tank to change a valve, they wouldnt need to shut off the valve feeding the COLD water tank, but they probably shut it off by mistake looking for the right valve.
They WOULD need to shut off the valve feeding the hot tank to do that.
>>3162 >>3163 >>3164 My work's building manager has been oddly passionate about helping me fix this. He sent a plumber round this morning, bizarrely, and the professional plumber says the tap from the black box into the hot water tank needs to be replaced, and that should fix it, so he'll do that on Monday. If he's wrong, I will be back!
I must say that my boiler does make a lot of on-off noises, as if it might keep shutting off, but I have also been told (by the heating engineer who clearly did not know) that maybe my hot water tank isn't used at all. It's all quite a weird system that has been DIYed by someone who knows as much as I do.
>>3168 Disregard that. I am an idiot and failed to notice the date on the original post, and since I can't delete this, let it stand as a monument to my idiocy.
>>3168 It wasn't, but after I moved out in Aug 2020, I've kept an eye on the listings for that building as it's just down the road and it's now well over £300 more than I was paying.
As to the issue with the heater, they replaced one of the heating cores as it was blocked, iirc.
