Do I really need a powerflush?

kookookaty

I would appreciate some help. All my radiators work fine except the two in my bedroom - one gets only slightly warm, the other doesn't get hot at all. We are a three storey house and my bedroom is on the middle floor. When all the other rads are turned off, the problem two rads get warm although remain cold at the bottom and although the in-pipe is hot, the out-pipe is cold. A plumber has diagnosed sludge in the rads as the valves work fine and he's tried to rebalance etc, and said he would flush the system with chemicals etc for £495, payment only if he sorts the problem. Does that sound reasonable for London suburbs? He said if we just replaced the radiators then the pump on our very old POtterton Kingfisher II boiler would eventually go. We will replace the boiler eventually but dont want to right now. He also said if we didn't have the money we could do it ourselves by draining the system and pouring in chemicals but I wouldn't want to risk that. Any feedback would be much appreciated.
Many thanks
Katy

scotty1971

have you tried bleeding the radiators?

HappyMJ

You could do it yourself. £100 for the weekend to hire the machine. If you know anyone else that could benefit you could split the cost between you over a weekend. http://www.hss.com/g/51610/Central-Heating-Flusher.html

Whether it "needs" doing or not is up to you. You will have to do it again when you change the boiler and for £495 it will make the system more efficient and more effective at heating the room but whether it will save you money...that's up to you to figure out. I don't think it does.

Mr_Ted

The chances are YES and the price sounds quite reasonable?

Powerflushing is the latest in pressure selling so its wise to be wary, but systems can and do get sludged after a long period and especially if there open system or have had lots of water changes!

What your being charged would work out on an 8hr days as approx £62 / hr?

There is however, and this is where it can get difficult, a correct procedure in power flushing!
Just connecting and letting the pump run is unlikely to cure all the problems and lead to further problems at a later date or at a boiler change.
A good engineer will shut of all the rads and after flushing the main system open them one at a time to individually flush them to ensure all the sludge is taken care of, this is where many powerflushes fail if the correct process is NOT followed???

You could try a HOT FLUSH by heating the system up to maximum with only the troublesome rads on and then draining the system and then repeat with all rads on????
But this does not guarantee removing all the sludge???

kookookaty

thanks for your comments - and yes we have tried bleeding them - it's a lot to pay out for so maybe we could try fixing it ourselves in the first instance!

billneely

Not a clever idea, those who say do it yourself obviously don't have any idea what they are talking about, we don't pay £1200 for machines to powerflush systems if its as easy just to stick chemicals in, granted powerflushing isn't hard but it does take some knowledge of the systems that we are flushing, ie what chemicals to use, what materials the heat exchangers /Radiators are made of, and finally if you dont take all of the chemicals out when doing it yourself you can bet on it that your system will suffer in the long run. Rant over lol