Central Heating inhibitor

AliceW

Early this morning my Ideal Logic combi boiler suddenly stopped working. The 'low water pressure: Fill system to 1.0 bar' message came up. I did this, but then realised I couldn't remember the exact 'off' position for the taps that let water into the system. I thought I had switched them back to where they should be, but I hadn't, and the pressure rose too high and the overflow began to drip.
My brother came round to help me and realised the problem (but not to start with--only when draining water from a radiator didn't seem to bring the pressure down.) Once he realised he let some more water from a radiator which brought the pressure back down to 1.0.
Because he had to drain off more than a big bucketful of water he says I probably need a plumber to come and add some inhibitor to the system as he believes he could have drained most of the existing inhibitor out. But he doesn't know how urgently I need to do this.
Could anyone tell me please... do I need to get the plumber to do this straight away? Or can I wait until my annual boiler check/service in May? Boiler is working fine now

Silvester89

Do you have a magnet clean filter on your boiler? If so I find its dead easy to add by stopping to flow of water into the filter, removing the water that's in there, then filling it back up with inhibitor.

footyguy

AliceW wrote: »

Early this morning my Ideal Logic combi boiler suddenly stopped working. The 'low water pressure: Fill system to 1.0 bar' message came up. I did this, but then realised I couldn't remember the exact 'off' position for the taps that let water into the system. I thought I had switched them back to where they should be, but I hadn't, and the pressure rose too high and the overflow began to drip.
My brother came round to help me and realised the problem (but not to start with--only when draining water from a radiator didn't seem to bring the pressure down.) Once he realised he let some more water from a radiator which brought the pressure back down to 1.0.
Because he had to drain off more than a big bucketful of water he says I probably need a plumber to come and add some inhibitor to the system as he believes he could have drained most of the existing inhibitor out. But he doesn't know how urgently I need to do this.
Could anyone tell me please... do I need to get the plumber to do this straight away? Or can I wait until my annual boiler check/service in May? Boiler is working fine now

The inhibitor is intended to prevent the formation of corrosion, scale, sludge, etc within the system. It does not clean an already dirty system (there's no where for the sludge to go)

Your system could suffer quite a lot of sludge build up, corrosion, etc in almost 6 months, especially as the boiler will presumably be working quite hard over especially the beginning of that period.

Best to take action asap to prevent damage occurring - cleaning/repair later will be a lot more expensive.

AliceW

Thank you very much for your reply. I'll ring up tomorrow and get a heating engineer to sort it.

Raxiel

If it's sludged up or leaking it does need looking into as others have suggested. You're probably fine on inhibitor though.

We had to drain the system, closed the rads and emptied the pipes, we were advised by the company who installed the system and are responsible for the warranty and annual services, that once it's been round the system a few times and come into contact with all the pipework, the product that remains in the water can be dilluted quite a bit before it ceases to be effective.

AndyPK

it's not urgent.

System

A bit like cladding on high rise buildings, there are a lot of myths about the use of chemical inhibitors in CH systems. As usual, our friends in Germany, Austria and Switzerland have more up to date CH water quality standards that do not require or recommend the use of chemical inhibitors.

http://www.heating-water.co.uk/technical-information/fill-central-heating.html

Quote: With respect to heating water treatment with chemical agents the statement of the VDI 2035 is in contrast to the British Standard that such agents should only be used in limited cases by professionals with the necessary chemical education. According to VDI 2035 there is no need for chemical agents as in a well-planned operated and maintained system, with a favourable water quality, no damages caused by lime-scale and corrosion are to be expected. Unquote

AndyCF

Could this not be treated the same way as you would say car antifreeze in that the 'mixture' has been weakened so it will not offer the same corrosion protection level ?

I'm unsure if there are actually hydrometers (or something like that) to actually test the 'corrosion inhibition strength' of central heating systems, no doubt there are though.

System

AndyCF wrote: »

Could this not be treated the same way as you would say car antifreeze in that the 'mixture' has been weakened so it will not offer the same corrosion protection level ?

I'm unsure if there are actually hydrometers (or something like that) to actually test the 'corrosion inhibition strength' of central heating systems, no doubt there are though.

https://www.fernox.com/test-kits

Similar for Sentinel and all other good makes. An engineer should not add inhibitor without checking how much is needed. Too much is as bad as too little.