Potterton Suprima HE

(Sorry to tell you this but I don’t repair the troublesome Suprima HE. I’ve only written about it here for completeness.)

The Potterton Suprima HE is a new(ish) and completely different design of boiler despite bearing the old Suprima name. About the only thing it has in common with the previous Suprima boilers is the compact cast iron heat exchanger. Everything else inside is different. Not very successful in terms of sales for Potterton and I think it is now discontinued. I’ve only ever been called out to fix a few  of them so I don’t have much depth of experience but here are the faults I’ve seen and/or know about:

Water ingress through air intake…

The design of the air intake is such that on a wall facing the weather, rain trickles into the boiler through the air intake and drips directly onto the flue fan motor, wrecking it. Not good as there is nothing that can be done to legally modify a boiler suffering from this effect to stop it. We are not allowed to alter or modify the design of a CE-marked boiler. 

Fan failure…

Flue fans also fail for reasons other than above! They just wear out and fail. The boiler sits silently and quietly when it ought to be running. A new fan makes the boiler work again. 

Control board failure…

As with most modern boilers, the environment the PCB works in (i.e. inside a central heating boiler) is quite hostile for modern electronics due to the constant heating and cooling of the board, as the boiler is turned on for periods, then left off and cold for periods, and functional failures result. 

Leaking recuperator…

The Suprima HE uses the same primary heat exchanger as previous models, and in order to earn the “HE” suffix (which stands for “high efficiency”), Potterton added a second heat exchanger to recover more of the heat from the flue gasses and convert the boiler into a condensing boiler. This second heat exchanger is called the “recuperator” (but I’ve no idea why). The recuperator they designed is made from aluminium and is desperately prone to corrosion by the slightly acidic condensate it generates, it the recuperator eventually corrodes through causing what appears to be water but is condensate really, to drip from the bottom of the boiler. Users, or even their plumbers often assume this is a minor problem and the leak is just a joint that needs tightening but this is rarely the case. When I arrive to investigate I usually find a rotten recuperator as this photo below. 

The pink arrow points to the corroded hole in a recuperator where the condensate leaks from. Baxi-Potterton still make and sell the recuperator as a spare part but its a horrible, time-consuming and expensive job changing it. The Suprima HE is a poor version of the previously excellent Suprima and I generally recommend replacing it once the recuperator begins to leak.

For more information or a repair to your non-HE Suprima, call or text me on my mobile 07866 766364. Sadly I no longer carry spares for or attend the Suprima HE. This page is published for completeness on the Suprima range and for information only.