Noisy Central Heating advice

raisty

Hello,

I hope this is the right place to post and that people don't mind my first post being a question.

My girlfriend and me have just moved in somewhere and the central heating just appears to be very noisy.

There is an ideal minimiser?? boiler in the garage and a hot water tank upstairs. The noise comes from the around the tank area upstairs. It is so loud that when it comes on in the morning it may as well be an alarm clock going off as we know we will get no more sleep. The noise is like a vibration noise and appears to be coming from the general area of the tank but may be coming from below. Even in other areas of the house you can here the noise constantly when the heating is on (even over the telly).

The heating appears to work ok apart from 1 radiator that doesn't appear to heat up as well as the others. I have bled all the radiators but this has made no difference.

I was wondering if anyone had any advice or suggestions?
Is this likely to be just normal noise for this sort of set up or does it indicate a problem?
We are thinking of taking out the british gas homecare but will they be able to do anything if it is just noisy?

thanks for any help

grimsalve

The system could have a bit of sludge in it so a Powerflush might help?

suki1964

Our oil boiler was that noisy when we moved in here, would wake you up every morning cos the tank was the same floor as the bedrooms.

We had a new boiler put in - nice and quiet now

Thinking back our old house, the gas boiler also got very noisy - till that was replaced

Not much help I know

stejobeth

Hiya

We had this problem last year. We had emergency cover on our insurance and an engineer came out to look at it. He checked everything and said it was a problem with the gas supply so phoned them and off he went :mad:. The gas engineer came out checked the gas supply and said it was fine so the original engineer had to come back. After looking at it again he said it was the pipes under the floor and they would have to be dug up which would cost thousands and guess what? we wouldn't be covered on insurance :eek:.

We phoned the insurance company and the engineer had signed off the job and they agreed we weren't covered.

We went away for the weekend and worried the whole time about how we would pay for it (spoilt the weekend really) .

Came home on the Monday and next door were having a new boiler fitted. I made my husband ask the lad doing it to have a listen to ours and he said "oh yeah, classic". He went in the garden looked in the pipe and it was full of mud! He cleaned it for us and we gave him £20 :T

gas4you

Ideal Minimiser!! Start saving for a new boiler quick!! Another boiler I won't go out to.

Is the pump in the airing cupboard?

Have you gone down to the boiler when this noise is happening?

devildog

Have had a similar problem(noise in tank etc), in our case it was basically plumbing in air cupboard done incorrectly(something to do with bypass or return?)by the pump, which meant air was being drawn in and causing all sorts of problems(sorry, not very technical) Finally found a plumber that knew what he was doing, explained the probs, let him hear the noise for himself, took a look and fixed it Silence is golden
Incidently also had the problem re the rads and this was also cured by sorting out the bit in the airing cupboard.

raisty

Thanks for the replies.

I think we will have to get someone out to look at it.

I am not absolutely sure where the pump is but I suspect it is below the tank (under some wooden boards). The noise is constant and does not really seem to be coming from the boiler itself. When the noise is happening the boiler just appears to be working as normal.

spirit

I've got this problem at the moment. On the 'in my home' board here, someone suggested that it just needs some Fernox in it. There's some stuff you put in via one of the rads. I've ordered some from ebay but Fernox is a well known brand so you could get it at any plumbers merchants.

devildog

The other thing you could possibly do is to drain off some of the water that runs through heating system(usually one of rads will have a drain off spout (not technical name) at the bottom of it.If you do this and the water is discoloured(like an orange/rust brown colour) it means that air is getting into the system somewhere and causing corrosion. You then need to find out where that is happening, fix it and then put something in(like fernox).