Hope someone might be able to help me in case I get ripped by a cowboy! Basically for a couple of weeks now we've been having problems getting hot water from the tap. Try it a few times and it eventually gets hot. Today we tried it and absolutely no joy at all.. Took the front cover off and noticed that there were no flames in the little viewing window part. Turned on the hot water again and could hear about 10 really fast igniting sounds then the flames came up then just died with a click sound afterwards..

Turned it off and then on again and tried the central heating and after a few attempts it fired up and stayed constant.. We then got hot water from the tap but as soon as we turn off the central heating and try the hot water again later on we get nothing..

Any ideas anyone? Could it be the ignition itself that's the problem?

Shaun, August 2008

Finally got this fixed in the end by a engineer.. Turns out it was the whole gas valve unit that needed changing.. Apparently the solenoid had seized up inside and you could actually give it a tap and it would spark up.. Got it cheap in the end (parts should have been £120 plus fitting) and got it done for £80 all in :)

Shaun, October 2008

this happened to us and it turned out to be a gas leak and gas the preasure wasnt high enough to ignite.
was sick of not getting hot water now its hot every time we turn the tap on

poolie, September 2008

I have the same boiler. There should be a flashing light which flashes at different rates and in your handbook is an explanation of the possible faults.

The very same thing happened to ours but it got worse and eventually gave up the ghost. A heating engineer came and listed all the faults it could be and said he would 'repair' the most obvious first!! I told him to leave it - politely of course. (he nicked my user manual too!! Eventually I took out a contract with British Gas which seems an expensive solution but they replaced the 2 main boards in the boiler; which they diagnosed as the most likely fault, at a cost of well over £200, serviced the boiler and offered to check all the radiators for me and they will service the boiler and radiators again at the end of this year. The system is now fine and working beautifully.

AJG, August 2008