Winter can hit your Worcester like reality hit Liz Truss. Hard. And right in pipes.
Severe snaps of cold weather during winter can cause your Worcester boilers' condensate pipe to freeze at the section in which is runs outside.
Here are three simple steps to unfreeze the pipe, without having to call out an engineer at your expense.
If you’ve already been through the mill with all this nonsense and it’s time for a new boiler, grab a quote here and have it fitted often as quickly as 24 hours - with monthly payments available.
How to tell it’s frozen?
Common clues your Worcester has fallen victim to the cold:
Fault code - D5
Fault code - EA
Flashing or persistent blue light
Flashing or persistent red light (Worcester CDi)
Bubbling or gurgling sound coming from boiler
Boiler is shutting down immediately after starting
If your Worcester is exhibiting any of the above symptoms and you suspect its condensate pipe is frozen, then here's how to solve it.
1. Apply warm water
Locate the condensate pipe on your Worcester boiler - if you're not sure where it is, just follow the pipe from under your boiler that's running externally out of the wall. With a Worcester boiler, it's very likely to be the white, plastic pipe.
Once you're happy you've found it and if it's safe to do so - i.e. try not to precariously hang of a ladder at a great height - then slowly apply warm water to the entirety of the outside section of the pipe.
Like with a frozen car windshield, it's best not to use boiling water as it could cause the condensate pipe to crack and require a replacement. Aim for water around 60-70 degrees Celsius.
Depending on the temperature outside, you may need to repeat this process several times before the water in the pipe begins to thaw.
2. Hot water bottle
Fill a hot water bottle with boiling water and hold or secure it against the pipe for as long as necessary. For the quickest results, we recommend first applying the hot water to the pipe and then if possible, also use the hot water bottle followed by wrapping the pipe.
If the temperature is below -2 degrees Celsius, the hot water you pour onto your condensate pipe will freeze again very quickly. The application of the hot water bottle will prevent this and make it much more likely for the water to thaw, quickly.
3. Wrapping the pipe
Wrapping the external area of your Worcester condensate pipe is simple method but probably the slowest to allow the water to un-freeze and this alone, may not work at all.
We would recommend applying one of the first two methods - ideally both - and then proceeding to wrap the pipe as a preventative measure to ensure it doesn't freeze again after you've managed to thaw it out.
You can wrap the pipe in almost any insulating material but most DIY stores will sell specific materials, designed to fit tightly around condensate pipes insulate them better than most household materials.
Thawing out your condensate pipe can take considerably longer than expected, sometimes several hours of repetitive effort. Don't make the assumption it's thawed out after just one application of hot water.
Pipe unfrozen, now what?
Once you're confident your condensate pipe is no longer frozen, and you've insulated it to prevent or minimize further freezing, you may need to reset your Worcester. You'll be able to find the reset button on the front of the boiler panel - just press and hold the button down for 10 seconds or until you can see that the boiler is resetting itself.
After the boiler has switched back on, there should no longer be any errors and it should start delivering hot water again.
If though, this has failed to solve the problem and you're still seeing fault codes, red or blue lights and it isn't delivering hot water then double check again to make sure the condensate pipe is definitely not frozen at any point and repeat the process.
If the frozen pipe is the only issue then this will solve the problem in most cases but if it continues to persist, you'll need to arrange for a Gas Safe engineer to carry out an inspection.
If your Worcester boiler is getting on a bit, and faults are becoming regular, we'd recommend comparing quotes for a new replacement.
