New boiler keeps losing pressure

[kashcheema]

Hi folks,

I assume this has been asked many a times, so I do apologise in advance. My boiler which is only 6 months old started to lose pressure in March. My plumber applied 2 bottles of Fernox F4 express sealer and it seemed to fix it. It has again started to lose pressure, not drastically, maybe 0.20 bar in 24 hours. I have applied 2 more bottles to the F4 express, I'm sure however a plumber would have done a better job with it. I'm not a DIY person by any stretch of the imagination. I then turned the heating on for 1 hour at approx. 22 degrees celsius to allow it to circulate. I then let it cool down and stuck the heating on again for 1 hours at approx. 15 degrees. It is still dropping every day by about 0.05-0.10 bar a night. There is def. a leak somewhere as I had the boiler checked over by Ideal and they said there was no fault with the boiler. I have recently extended and have laid down marble flooring all downstairs and the new pipework is running under the floor and there is no chance that I want to rip any of it out. I read somewhere but i can't find the page now, that it was possible to install a device which constantly kept the pressure at say 1.5 bar without the need to repressurise every few days. Does anyone know of this and would you recommend? Alternatively, other than ripping out the floor, what other options do I have?

Thanks,

Kash

 

[Timmy D]

Hi all, thanks for the responses. So i isolated the valves last night, set to 1.5 bar and this morning 10 hours later it is still at 1.5 bar. I guess this means the problem is not in the boiler/system?

I also spoke to my tiler this morning and he does these jobs all the time and always applies the same process, so I am sure he has done the right thing here. Only last month he tiled a 400sqm car showroom in Liverpool and he used the exact same process as he did on mine.

I have spoken to a company which does thermal imaging and will look to get them out in the next few days to detect where the leak is, I will sadly then have to get my tiler back round to dig up that area, get the pipework fixed and retile over. The plumber at this company did mention it may be a faulty heat exchanger, but he said he'd come and take a look. I can't go back to the original company I used as the fella who owns it is going through a divorce and he will be dissolving the company

What valves did you isolate? Boiler valves or flow/return to just the new section?

If just the new section and you’ve run the system for 24/48h without pressure loss, you’ve got your answer and it’s not the heat exchanger. Funny thing is, I came across a leaking heat exchanger today.