Having never looked inside a combi boiler I was impressed that this information took me straight to the source of the problem.
I could see that the small piston was pushing out when the hot tap was turned on. It takes about 3-4 seconds to fully expand so I don't know if this is normal.
The microswitch works fine. By operating this manually the boiler fires up.
What was at fault was that the piston wasn't pushing the microswitch enough to activate it.
A little adjustment by bending the microswitch arm got it going again.
Is it likely that the diaphragm is nearing the end of its life anyway?
Andrew Vevers
July 2008