Replacing old programmer - problem!

[Billyqureshi]

Hi. Was wondering if anyone can help me with this!

my mum lives in am oldish house. I think it's a semi gravity system because there is high pressure cold water, a tank with immersion heater in it in the bathroom cupboard, a boiler below it in the kitchen, and I'm quite sure there's a water tank in the loft.

Theres a a small toilet room under the stairs which has always had a programmer in it. Picture attached. We were able to have water without heating, or water with heating. We couldn't have heating only. When I lived there, the switches stopped functioning and so we got used to using the mains switch to the downstairs boiler to control heating. This meant we always had heating with hot water, unless we just put the immersion heater on in the bathroom.

now. Mums had the toilet renovated and the builder has removed the old programmer and tiled over it. I never saw what was behind there but I presume some wires are there. I have no idea where these wires would have gone to.

he has fitted a new programmer (pictured) to where the plug socket to the boiler was.

now, he can't get the heating to work! When it's on, there's hot water but no heating. I find this very difficult to understand.


can anyone explain

what wires would have existed in the toilet and where would they have gone to
how can it be ok to just tile over them
is placing a new programmer by the boiler ever going to work to offer hw without heating
is the new programmer suitable
is it likely that he's just put a timer on a plug socket to the boiler
why is the heating not working now (If someone can explain how these systems actually provide hw without heating then I'd like to know)




The first few pics are obviously the old programmer.
With the new one, is the grey cable just from the ring main and the white flex goes to the boiler? Because then all this is just a timed switch. How could it possibly control heating / water?

thanks in advance to anyone that can educate me on this!

 

[alanl]

Get the builder back.
It looked a pile of junk before, and the new one looks the same.
They are £35ish new.

 

[Guest111]

Odds are it's gravity hot water with pumped heating,and I'll bet anything he's just took a feed to boiler and not to heating pump and this is why you have no heating.You need a 2 channel programmer and it will have some kind of interlock so that when you select hot water you get just that but when you select heating you get both.Basically the way it works is this,you select hot water and this just fires the boiler,the hot water rises through the pipes and heats the tank,when you select heating it switches on the pump which forces the water through the heating circuit,so as you see to get heating you must fire the boiler AND the pump,hence giving you hot water also,it is possible to get heating without hot water but this would mean fitting a motorised valve.

 

[Geordie Spark]

It's a very old fashioned and not very efficient system and should have been done away with years ago.

When I was working, I used to convert them to Fully Pumped Systems or rip them out & replace them with a Combi boiler.

Dump it and get yourself a nice combi boiler rated at about 28/32 kW.

If you're on certain benefits you may be eligible to have one supplied & fitted free.

If your bathroom cupboard is on an outside wall it could happily live in there.

Control it with a wireless roomstat.

 

[Billyqureshi]

Thanks guys for the input. Very appreciated. She isn't Ina position to completely upgrade the heating system just yet so we need to salvage the current problem. Interestingly the builder chap hasn't returned since learning the heating doesn't work, even though he's owed 200 pounds! Probably just as well!
now. To get this fixed, I'd like to know:

is is it just a case of rewiring the programmer connected by the boiler? (I presume the original location of the old programmer in the toilet just had some cable that went to the boiler in the kitchen?)

Is the "new" programmer that he has fitted suitable for this installation?

is is a job for a plumber or a sparky?

would be grateful for your advice!

 

[telectrix]

it's really a job for both trades. you got geordie up there who's clued up on both disciplines, but i'm not sure if he's past his sell by date.

 

[Geordie Spark]

Thanks guys for the input. Very appreciated. She isn't Ina position to completely upgrade the heating system just yet so we need to salvage the current problem. Interestingly the builder chap hasn't returned since learning the heating doesn't work, even though he's owed 200 pounds! Probably just as well!
now. To get this fixed, I'd like to know:

is is it just a case of rewiring the programmer connected by the boiler? (I presume the original location of the old programmer in the toilet just had some cable that went to the boiler in the kitchen?)

Is the "new" programmer that he has fitted suitable for this installation?

is is a job for a plumber or a sparky?

would be grateful for your advice!

Neither!

It's a job for a Heating Engineer who "should" be skilled in both.

 

[Geordie Spark]

it's really a job for both trades. you got geordie up there who's clued up on both disciplines, but i'm not sure if he's past his sell by date.

Geordies ****d just now bonny lad.