Posts

Vaillant boiler breaking down -- impossible to order replacement parts because of unique supplier

Image
Last month, our Vaillant boiler started making strange airplane take-off noises from time to time. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjyI8D03zII and: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnOoDrUyHkc The local council was coming buy to do their periodic inspection and found the boiler's emissions were well within tolerances.  They suggested we get an accredited chimney sweep also "SSIGA" certified to clean gas boilers, which I did, selecting one from the following list: https://m4.ti.ch/fileadmin/DT/temi/domande_costruzione/polizia_fuoco/Elenco_spazzacamini_08112017.pdf That gentleman came, opened the boiler and began performing his cleaning. While he was doing his cleaning, the heat exchanger coil broke, beginning to spurt water from the bottom left in the picture above. Time to call our trusted plumber.  Our plumber looked at repairing this coil as a temporary fix, but was unable to because of the mix of metals used in the heat exchanger tube.  No problem -- let's look

Moving to Switzerland, buying a home with another Vaillant boiler installed

Image
When we moved to Switzerland in 2017, I was happy to see that the house we bought also had a Vaillant boiler.  As far as I could tell it was virtually the same ecoTEC plus line I had chosen only a few years earlier for our house in London.  It was an older model, installed in 2007, but I was confident about the quality. In winter 2018, we got an error with the boiler. We began seeing errors in February and in March it stopped working altogether.  My wife called in the local assistance for Vaillant boilers, VezzoliGas SA ( https://www.vezzoli.ch/ ). The repair people showed up and before working required my wife to sign a form which stated she would be responsible for any costs.  Then they started working.   They found problems which they claimed were related to dust from the next-door-neighbour's demolition works.  They assured my wife that owing to the clear cause of the damage, the repairs would be covered by the neighbour's construction firm's insurance.  The worked furt

Choosing Vaillant ecoTEC Plus for my London renovation

Image
In 2012 we renovated our London house.  After considering many of the options, I chose the Vaillant ecoTEC Plus 630 System Boiler for use in our house, along with a Vaillant auroSTOR 310 tank. At GBP 971.64+VAT, I've been very happy with the features, efficiency and value for money of this Vaillant product. The service and timeliness from https://www.plumbnation.co.uk/ was outstanding, and I was at that point a happy Vaillant customer who would recommend them again.