Heating problem

ukjoel

Sorry - wasnt quite clear in last email.
All upstairs rads lovely and toasty.

Downstairs some are very toasty and some have cool spots (generally bottom and middle of rads)
There is one double convector which one side is toasty and the other side is stone cold.

Is a powerflush 100% reliable or are there some rads where bits are so blocked up and impacted with sludge or rust internally that they will never be moved?

Catbells

Is a powerflush 100% reliable or are there some rads where bits are so blocked up and impacted with sludge or rust internally that they will never be moved?

The engineer I had balanced my radiators and now the warm bits are hot but I can't operate the room thermostats on them because he said there was a build up of gunge in them. So = gunge will affect some things but not necessarily the heat radiated. Maybe you need new radiators.

If the valves had gone there would be not heat in any of the radiators. Just had some valves replaced before Xmas as there was no heat anywhere in the house.

travellerboy

I would guess that you still have an unbalanced system or the flow is too low. Normally a pump has 3 speeds, the higher the speed the higher the flow. If it is not at max increase to max and see what happens. If no change, shut off the hottest rad forcing the flow to the poor heating ones. If the colder rads heat up it proves that the system is unbalanced.

garethgas

First of all, I'd get the plumber back as he's not rectified the problem.
It could be something like the pump not set correctly (as previously mentioned) or the by pass might need adjusting if its a manual one.
A power flush has its uses but its not a magic cure for all circulation problems.
It also depends on what type of boiler/system you have

ruky_uk

We have had similar prob to one mentioned here - done the same with powerflush and the valves however the issue is still present.

Now having the boiler looked at as think prob is with that. We increased the pump to max - the Rads all warmed up however strong smell of burning so turned that down again and also tried shutting off all the Rads that heated up fine so that the ones that weren't warming up may start getting better with pressure - not worked.

Plumber said could be that the boiler doesn't have sufficient power to warm all the Rads due to low power?? Getting that looked into now so will be keeping eye on this post to see if your issue been resolved thru other methods!!

ukjoel

Cheers Travellerboy - Had pretty much same thought process to you but have tried that route.

Have checked and boiler is more than capable of heating a house of this size with the rads we have.

Pump was on setting one of two and we increased it to two of two as one of the suggestions on the day of the powerflush and it didnt make any difference.

Also tried balancing and turning off all the hot rads and again made no difference.

We had a magnaclean installed at the same time as the flush and when I bleed the rads now its clear as crystal (before it was black).

We are replacing the valves as general concensus is that they are partially blocked as water is boiling hot to the valves and then just warm in rads. We are also going to upgrade the worst two rads at the same time from singles to double convectors as previous owners chose style over ability to heat a room.

Cheers

keystone

How long did they powerflush for? If it was less than at least 4 hours it wasn't done properly and it never gets all the carp out of the rads. Best way to do that is take 'em off, outside in the garden and flush through with a hosepipe.

I still don't think its necessary to change any valves or rads (see earlier post) as it just needs a damned good clean.

Cheers

ukjoel

He arrived at 8am and was powerflushing from about half eight, until 4pm. Did the whole system and then put it through each rad individually until the water was coming out clear through all of them.

Went round with the rubber mallett on all the rads.

From 4pm till 8pm was spent trying to get the downstairs rads hot and trying everythings thats been suggested. Pump settings, balancing, turning hot ones off, valve open and closing, lots of bleeding, etc, adjusting temp of boiler.

I had a magnaclean installed as well on the same day and thats been running since.