recent power outage in Medway

Running gas central heating boilers from generators is not as simple as it looks, I had a generator which would run everything else but the central heating circuits. It turns out that the output from basic generators is not smooth enough to power the circuit boards used in gas boilers, you need an inverter generator which are much more expensive than standard generators. Dave W

Many gas boiler controllers detect the presence of the burner/pilot flame by applying 250V AC mains to a probe in the flame. A flame acts as a weak rectifier and so will generate a small DC voltage which the controller checks before opening the main burner gas valve.

The flame detection circuit may not work if the generators output waveform is non-sinusoidal or if the output is noisy or not grounded correctly. The flame detection circuit has to be a fail safe circuit so a poor signal from the detector may be regarded as a potential failure and causes the controller to abort a start up sequence and enter a non-functional locked out state.

The start up sequence of many spark ignition gas boilers would normally begin with turning on the burner fan and proving a pressure change has occurred. After a short delay to purge any gas the pilot flame gas valve will open and ignition initiated using a spark generator for a few second. Following this flame detection is expected and if proved the main burner gas valve will be opened to admit gas to the main burner. Flame presence continues to be monitored and if lost then all gas valves are shut and the controller go to lockout.

Clive S

Thank you lads for some illuminating things that I could do. I could have gone to my Son but an Airedale dog and cats not compatable.

The 2 day low temperatures have left me feeling tired and achy back. It took several hours for the heating to come up to temperature, all OK now.

I will look into one of there catalytic heaters, I believe they do not need a vent? Till the next saga, Thank you.

Clive, I can sympathise with your cold days, this afternoon our central heating stopped working, we still have hot water but the heating circuit will not function. We have boiler insurance with Domestic and General, went online to book a repair and Wednesday is the earliest, so 2 days without heating, boiler was only serviced last week so perhaps if it ain’t broke then don’t fix it springs to mind. All is not doom and gloom though we have a woodburner in our lounge so will have to fight our four cats for space in front of it, we shall survive. Dave W

this afternoon our central heating stopped working, we still have hot water but the heating circuit will not function

Do you have a combi or a system boiler Dave ?

If yours is a system boiler, check the 3 port valve. Failure of the valve syncronous motor doesn't switch over from hot water to heating. But the valves have a manual override lever - if you actuate this (they are stiff to operate against a strong spring & reduction gearbox) & the heating then works, it is probably the valve motor that has failed. Manually toggling the valve on can keep you warm until the proper fix arrives (there is a "park position" notch in the housing to hold it in position). My 3 port valve motor has failed twice in the 28 years I have been in this house - a relatively cheap & easy fix, though, at (currently) just over £15 from Toolstation.

If yours is a combi boiler, I can't offer any possible solutions as I have no first hand experience of the unreliable things.

Nigel B.

Edited By mgnbuk on 21/02/2022 19:15:50

Nigel, it is a combi boiler and I have checked that there are no error codes being displayed on the boiler so it looks like the room thermostat is not working, it is a wireless unit and has been in place for ten years with no problems, and no alterations in the house to cause it any problems. Have changed the batteries and retuned the sender unit to the receiver, no joy the boiler tries to initiate but just shows that the fan is purging as if the attempt to fire up has been aborted. We still have hot water from the boiler so nothing drastically wrong with it. The system is covered by a full maintenance contract and the engineer is scheduled to visit tomorrow, hopefully full heat will be restored, until then the centre of operations is the lounge where we have an inset woodburner which can give up to 7 kw of heat. Many thanks for your help, Dave W

Whatever happened to just the plain old good power CUT

Plus one for the above. I sometimes think that I live in the USA and not the UK. Plus "cut" is shorter than "outage" so keep it simple.

Andrew.

Several months ago, it became obvious that our central heating system had stopped working. It was freezing weather and my first thought was that an excess of ice had built up in the condensate drain. We are Housing Association tenants so I phoned and reported a fault. It was 'after hours'.

The duty repair guy called us back and asked what error codes the boiler was displaying. He then suggested that I wind the wireless thermostat control knob up and down vigorously several times and he would call again later to learn whether this had been successful. I was able to report that this had fixed the problem.

He and I diagnosed that I had had occasion to switch off the mains electrical supply earlier that afternoon - this had caused the wireless thermostat on the hall wall to 'forget' its link to the receiver unit in the airing cupboard.

I was inpressed with this remote problem solving that avoided his coming out so he was meanwhile able to respond to calls from other tenants.

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

Pedant alert!

Criticising English is terrible hazardous! There's an order rule: 'opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose'. Joe should have said 'Whatever happened to just the good old plain power CUT'. For the same reason we have to refer to the Big Bad Bear, not the Bad Big Bear.

Alert over.

I'm OK with outage, a word I heard at work 50 years ago. True it's an Americanism like 'shortage', but both words are useful. I suppose the Americans coined them from British English stock-control words like baggage, dosage, breakage, coverage, storage, tonnage, luggage, usage, spillage, vintage, spoilage, salvage, shrinkage and wastage etc. Nothing unpatriotic about them.

Dave

While catalytic has heaters don’t need a flue they do need a suitable air vent for input air. Also you have to be aware of the room volume minimum requirement. We have a fixed catalytic gas fire in our lounge, highly recommended very efficient.

Point taken SOD, I wasn't in any way criticising the grammar it was just the use of the word outage.

Got to go now and get those diapers that I left in the truck of my station wagon ( it's all just humour )

Joe

I would think a power cut is where it would affect just an item or say a house, an outage is where a whole area is without power as in my case in Medway, where over 300 houses were affected.

The after effects to me being chilled were like having the Flu, muscle and joint pains etc. it has taken a few days to wear off physically so I feel I may have been on the way to being frozen.

It was several hours before the thermostat was up to heat.

Nowhere near frozen, but body core temperature only needs to drop a couple of degrees Celsius before things become very serious. Extremities are starved of blood circulation to preserve core temperature, long before that, so fingers and toes start to lose sensation (beyond feeling cold). If one’s body thermostat is not working too effectively, it can take some time to get things back on an even keel.

My 35 year old 1900 watt (max) honda generator has just run for 45 hours from fri to monday, it will power the oil heating boiler and some lights,plus freezers and fridge selectively,and I have changeover switch and run the honda in the garage which is detached from the dwelling, plus we a have a log burner stove in the lounge,so we have one source of heat which requires no power.but due to the risk of fire and the small fuel tank i could not use the honda to run the central heating overnigh problems with this set up, 1900 max 1700 continuous , watts will not power the micro wave , the electric garage doors a recent installation are supposed to have an emergency release ,in practice for an 80 year old was difficult ,so I went in through the side door fire up the honda and it did struggle to opearate to raise the door, i did not use the micro wave as its a bit too close to the generator limit,so we did not have an oven, only a 2 ring camping gaz burner, so ready meals are out. I would not risk using bt router and computer in case this old generator blew it all up though I did risk using the TV, so cooking and communication was not easy, Mobile phone signal is weak, Now speaking to a open reach engineer ,BT is changing all uk land line phones to digital by 2024 so in future when the power is down and old style phones which need no power will not work,so it will be a case of using an emergency battery pack ,or inverter type generator with regulator control to power modern electronics, the honda equvalent to my existing generator is around £1300 though there other makes cheaper oriental makers which raise the question of long term reliabilty.My location is rural and isolated and power cuts are common . current thoughts to improve the situation are buy a 3000w generator with fuel tank capacity to run all night and regulated current that will safely drive electronic devices and telephone. or get a 2000w inverter generator to run the house and get the lowest power microwave and use the existing generator to run it. Another problem did occurr ,the old Honda has been an execellent starter provided there is fresh petrol in the tank, use this modern e10 petrol and leave just a drop in the carburretor and it gums up into a green sludge and blocks the main jet. The mains came on yesterday in the afternoon ,so I put all gear back into store then at 6 pm it went off luckily I found out that it was only for 2 hrs for a reconnection a mile down the lane.

Re the motor failure on 3 port zone valves. I have never had a failure of a motor in nigh on 50 years. BUT I have had frequent failure of the microswitch limit switches. So if you have a dud 3 port valve and the motor still works, then check the microswitches!

I have two motor heads in stock with new microswitches fitted so that I am ready to change the motor head when the next microswitch fails.

Andrew.

If you had an electric car and a suitable inverter you could run the house off the car battery for quite a long time.

If you had an electric car and a suitable inverter you could run the house off the car battery for quite a long time.

Some recent electric cars have a "power out" function rated at a couple of kilowatts - the Hyundai advert used to "sponsor" Film 4 ad breaks shows a projector being plugged in to the car's 13A 240v outlet.

Nigel B.

Clive, my Mother, and many more like her, lived to be 95 and never knew anything other than an open fire.

She would not have an electric blanket and regarded radiators as little more than tin boxes on the wall.

I am 83 and still do not make much use of my oil heating, one tank full, 1000 lters lasts me for 18 months, mostly used to heat water for showers and sink use..

Get yourself a dog, walk a lot, keep warm, save the Planet !

Regarding power disruption I was taught that "outage" is an accidental power failure whereas "cut" is a deliberate disconnection . Colin