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Hi,
I've got a small (30 litre I think) plastic header tank in the loft, and its full of brown sludge. It just has a cold water feed into it, an overflow pipe, and one pipe at the bottom, which joins onto the main central heating pipe. There is a heat only boiler, and a megaflo hot water tank, which is mains water fed, not tank fed.
I'd like to drain the tank, and clean all the brown sludge out, and I've got an idea about how to do this, but can you please check to see if it's correct, and if not what I should do instead:
1)Turn water off, and drain tank either by pumping the water out, or draining down the heating system just enough to empty the tank
2) Clean all the sludge
3) First put inhibitor in the tank, then fill the rest with water

Thanks for any replies
 
You have about 3 options, -
Turn mains supply off to tank firstly, then-
Syphon the tank out using a hose, (you could keep mains on to give you a chance to move the hose around the tank base while cleaning tank with a cloth) then clean rest with an old towel and large bucket.
or Drain heating system from a draincock and then clean tank,
or, the best way, just use a wet vacumn cleaner to suck the final dirty water in tank after cleaning and draining most of tank
 
Don't put the inhibitor just into the tank later.
You want it down into the system, so you need some water drained out of system. Then turn the mains on and wait until it begins to fill up to the feed pipe and immediately add inhibitor, so it is drawn down into system
 
Thanks, I’ve got a wet vac, and there’s a ball isolation valve next the the tank so I can easily turn the water on and off. In the system, there is currently Atag inhibitor, which was added when the boiler was replaced, so should I use Atag inhibitor again, or can I use any inhibitor?
 
Difficult to know if you should add same inhibitor, or mix another brand in, or drain system before adding your brand.
Time and customer choice often make my decision.
If your system is fairly dirty, then maybe consider flushing it using a cleaning chemical.
But if it isn't dirty, perhaps just add same brand inhibitor for simplicity, or drain system and refill with your inhibitor.
I use Fernox F5, or F3 for flushing (needs in an operating system for specified period) and Fernox F1 inhibitor, but both are expensive.
 
I'm sure atag use adey Chems
 
Hi,
I've got a small (30 litre I think) plastic header tank in the loft, and its full of brown sludge. It just has a cold water feed into it, an overflow pipe, and one pipe at the bottom, which joins onto the main central heating pipe. There is a heat only boiler, and a megaflo hot water tank, which is mains water fed, not tank fed.
I'd like to drain the tank, and clean all the brown sludge out, and I've got an idea about how to do this, but can you please check to see if it's correct, and if not what I should do instead:
1)Turn water off, and drain tank either by pumping the water out, or draining down the heating system just enough to empty the tank
2) Clean all the sludge
3) First put inhibitor in the tank, then fill the rest with water

Thanks for any replies

Hello Jonny,

Definitely don`t drain the sludge down into the Heating system.

You should follow the advice above and remove the sludge by a method that does not allow the sludge to enter the Cold Feed to the Heating system / the system circulation pipework.

For example bale out most of the F&E Tank water into buckets and then remove the sludge using your WetVac / Cloths etc.

Please make sure that you don`t use anything like washing up liquid when cleaning out the Tank - unless you are actually going to disconnect and remove it from the Roof space to clean it and would be able to ensure that no residue remained in the Tank.

I mention this because a friend of mine used `plenty of it` while cleaning his F&E Tank - unfortunately for him even a very small amount of washing up liquid can cause a BIG problem in a Heating system and would require a lot of `Filling & Draining` to get rid of the Foaming that it would cause !

Also there is a lot of Sodium / Salt in washing up liquid which in my friends case was a concern because of the amount that he used / the amount that had entered the Heating system - flushing it out was a full Days work.

Regards,

Chris
 
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I’m not sure how dirty the system is, but I would imagine it would have been drained down about a year ago when the boiler was replaced, and that was when the Atag inhibitor was put in. I will probably not remove the tank from the attic, but I’ll put a bung in the bottom pipe outlet so no sludge goes into the system, and I won’t use soap or anything. I think I’ll just get Atag inhibitor for simplicity, and do I put the whole bottle in?
 
Usually no problem if you slightly overdose a system with inhibitor, so if you want you could put entire bottle in. The correct minimum amount depends on the system water volume and normally one bottle to 100 litres of system water or max 10 average rad system (average small house).
Or keep some inhibitor for future top ups if you think any rad has to be removed in future for decorating for example.
 
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