To powerflush or not to powerflush?

Fortyfoot

After reading the posts in this thread I found this LINK which gives details of engineers who carry out powerflushing. I am sure that others will advertise in the local press.

Yesterday I was advised to vibrate the return pipe on my system and, this morning when it started up it worked OK. A lot of air was also pushed round the system. May have been silt or an air lock, or both! I will never know.

Fortyfoot

gasman09

Skiduck wrote: »

don't bother with a powerflush at first.
Get a litre of Ferroquest by Betzdearborn (sentinel) from a plumbers merchant for about 20 quid
flush through the system by leaving the heating on etc, if that doesn't work, then a powerflush may help.

Powerflushes are expensive because you are paying a corgi engineer to sit there all day waiting, you are not actually paying for a lot of chemicals of equipment - a powerflush kit is only 400 quid.

My advice, use the ferroquest then if that sorts it, put some inhibitor in to keep the system smelling fresh and lovely ;-)

This poster clearly has no idea on the process of a power flush. To say you are paying for a Corgi engineer to sit there and do nothing is an insult to the trade. Any engineer worth his money will be carrying out a long process to ensure his customers system is rid of sludge and corrosion deposits. The process involves dumping each radiator to waste after each radiator has been cleaned in 2 directions. The costs may be out of date but the insult left here suggests power flushing is not worth the cost. If anyone thinks this is wrong please message me.

EliteHeat

gasman09 wrote: »

This poster clearly has no idea on the process of a power flush. To say you are paying for a Corgi engineer to sit there and do nothing is an insult to the trade. Any engineer worth his money will be carrying out a long process to ensure his customers system is rid of sludge and corrosion deposits. The process involves dumping each radiator to waste after each radiator has been cleaned in 2 directions. The costs may be out of date but the insult left here suggests power flushing is not worth the cost. If anyone thinks this is wrong please message me.

Seemed a bit odd to me as well. Adding cleanser to the header tank will achieve nothing, not flushing the system will cause any contamination put into suspension to settle again. Finally, my equipment cost me over £1000 and I certainly do not sit around doing nothing when PFing.

If you really want to, you can hire some second rate power flushing equipment for about £50 per day and buy your own chemicals etc. Whilst this isn't rocket science, I would not recommend that anyone did a DIY power flush unless they have a very good understanding of what they are doing and how thier system is configured and works.