is it usual to only have pump on downstairs radiators?

wrightk

i have a solid fuel system and have been having troubles with the upstairs radiators. the ones downstairs work fine theres only two which work upstairs. i was having a look at the system in the cupboard where the cylinder is and from what i can see the pump only seems to feed the downstairs radiators and the upstairs radiators are not connected to each other directly.

it seems the upstairs radiators are fed separately by a pipe that comes out of the top of the hot water cylinder? so i presume that the two upstairs are being heated by gravity and thats why the others arent working because there isnt enough pressure to do them?

is this a usual setup and is there anything i can do to remedy this?

muckybutt

They could had been installed as heat sinks, should the power go off you would be left without a pump, the gravity fed side would then take away the heat from the boiler so it didnt explode / overheat if that makes sence.

wrightk

yes makes sense thanks. is there any way though that i can get the heating to work on the radiators upstairs that aren't working. its like the heat sink side of it is only enough to feed two radiators upstairs but there is not enough to flow to the other radiators, without a pump feeding them i think its going to be useless but im not sure if adding another pump is practical/doable

Cardew

muckybutt wrote: »

They could had been installed as heat sinks, should the power go off you would be left without a pump, the gravity fed side would then take away the heat from the boiler so it didnt explode / overheat if that makes sence.

Surely you must have a 'fail safe' safety system and cannot rely on radiators as heat sinks.

If all radiators were switched off, water could boil and system explode. Could even happen with a radiator switched on.

So I would have thought it mandatory to have a vent.

molerat

There will be a vent into the F&E tank but when a solid fuel system decides to go for it the water in the DHW tank really boils then vents into the F&E and eventually the system is replenished with already boiling water with nowhere for the heat to go. The rads will be there to assist in the dissipation of that heat. Nothing quite like being woken up in the middle of the night with what sounds like an express train coming through the middle of the house.

As to the op's question, would fitting a pump into the DHW circuit help ?

wrightk

thanks for the replies. it is really a case of whether a pump feeding the upstairs rads would be practical or not and whether this is a usual way of setting up things. im not sure the way my system is set up is usual.

if a pump is added to the upstairs circuit it presents a problem in that it would also need to be wired into the control unit which the high and low limit stats on the cylinder could then trigger the second pump also.

im not sure why there isnt just one pump which feeds all the radiators?

wrightk

ok i think i may have just answered my own query regarding this. apparrantly you should never fully pump a solid fuel system.

so i suppose the question now is, if upstairs is the gravity fed side and downstairs is the pumped side. how do i get that gravity fed side to actually heat the other rads

muckybutt

Cardew wrote: »

Surely you must have a 'fail safe' safety system and cannot rely on radiators as heat sinks.

If all radiators were switched off, water could boil and system explode. Could even happen with a radiator switched on.

So I would have thought it mandatory to have a vent.

On our system the heat sink rad cant be turned off at all, all other rads can be via the rad stats, also worth noting that solid fuel systems should have a galv / metal header tank, should the pump stop or fail and the system starts to boil then the tank wont melt, it does and has happened where the tank spews its contense of boiling water everywhere.

wrightk

so is there anything i can do?