Prepare for a long story/process....
Open vented system no longer heats downstairs radiators.
No thermastatic valves just manual.
Boiler downstairs, BAXI, seems to work fine
I am a DIYer, Homeowner just over 1 year.
Moved in, heating was fine.
Then some blew up in the airing cupboard.
After 8 homeserver visits and a compensation cheque for their lack of skills..
The motor has been replaced twice
The diverter valve 3 times
HW tank stat twice
Room thermastat once
Whole system drained twice.
Eventually the electrical problem was fixed
Since then, we no longer get heating downstairs, their last visit "there must be a blockage caused by sludge". This is when i sacked them off and looked into this myself.
I've removed and flush out EVERY radiator in the house (Yes, they did have a fair amount of sludge in, now removed) I placed them back in and bled the air. Still no heat downstairs.
So i drained the system down as much as i could, every radiator open, doing this, i found that even though the water stopped coming out, if i went to another downstairs radiator, it was full of water?? This may be normal, or this might be part of the issue?
This is when i also added a Magiclean filter to the system, on the pipe between outlet of the pump and diverter valve. I bought 2m of pipe and ended up with 1.3m left, only used around 30cm but there was a lot of trial and error with fitting due to very tight space. This thing is working a treat, up to now it has cleaned a good amount (nothing compared to what i manually flushed out, it would have taken months of cleaning for the filter to do the same job if at all)
Once drained, i cleaned the header tank, added 2 liters of 800x cleaning solution (I have 9 radiators, most single but some double) so this should have been more than enough. Let everything fill up and bled the air, ran for 24 hours, mostly with heat, but at night i turned off the boiler and left pump running.
Next day i went around to each radiator at a time, attached hose to downstairs radiator, left the top tank filling ON, and left the pump on.
My idea was to keep adding fresh water to the system whilst draining each downstairs radiator, diluting the chemical in the system (Not letting the header tank get low) did this for around 2 hours.
Then drained the whole system. again, downstairs radiators still had water in them? so drained them manually as well.
Added neutralister to the header tank, let everything fill up, bled and ran for 1 week.
Still no heat downstairs!
So i learned about air locks.
Upstairs rads were fine and bled, so turned them all off at just 1 side as normal.
One at a time, isolated each radiator, bled out pressue, removed whole bleed nut(i think its called) attached a plastic nut to hose adapter.
Then i opened one side of the radiator fully for a few seconds, from what i can tell, a few bubles came out, turned that side off, did the other side.
Moved on to the next rad.
Every time i did this, hot water came through one side as expected, so the hot feed must be fine.
The cold side also generated high pressure as expected.
So this is where i am up to.
All upstairs radiators turned off, no heat downstairs.
Hot and cold feed seem to be fine to me.
pump seems to be working fine.
I have no idea what to do, the hot water is being pushed into the radiators, the cold water will flow backwards at force, so i assume the pipe isn't blocked.
Any ideas or questions extremely appriciated
Open vented system no longer heats downstairs radiators.
No thermastatic valves just manual.
Boiler downstairs, BAXI, seems to work fine
I am a DIYer, Homeowner just over 1 year.
Moved in, heating was fine.
Then some blew up in the airing cupboard.
After 8 homeserver visits and a compensation cheque for their lack of skills..
The motor has been replaced twice
The diverter valve 3 times
HW tank stat twice
Room thermastat once
Whole system drained twice.
Eventually the electrical problem was fixed
Since then, we no longer get heating downstairs, their last visit "there must be a blockage caused by sludge". This is when i sacked them off and looked into this myself.
I've removed and flush out EVERY radiator in the house (Yes, they did have a fair amount of sludge in, now removed) I placed them back in and bled the air. Still no heat downstairs.
So i drained the system down as much as i could, every radiator open, doing this, i found that even though the water stopped coming out, if i went to another downstairs radiator, it was full of water?? This may be normal, or this might be part of the issue?
This is when i also added a Magiclean filter to the system, on the pipe between outlet of the pump and diverter valve. I bought 2m of pipe and ended up with 1.3m left, only used around 30cm but there was a lot of trial and error with fitting due to very tight space. This thing is working a treat, up to now it has cleaned a good amount (nothing compared to what i manually flushed out, it would have taken months of cleaning for the filter to do the same job if at all)
Once drained, i cleaned the header tank, added 2 liters of 800x cleaning solution (I have 9 radiators, most single but some double) so this should have been more than enough. Let everything fill up and bled the air, ran for 24 hours, mostly with heat, but at night i turned off the boiler and left pump running.
Next day i went around to each radiator at a time, attached hose to downstairs radiator, left the top tank filling ON, and left the pump on.
My idea was to keep adding fresh water to the system whilst draining each downstairs radiator, diluting the chemical in the system (Not letting the header tank get low) did this for around 2 hours.
Then drained the whole system. again, downstairs radiators still had water in them? so drained them manually as well.
Added neutralister to the header tank, let everything fill up, bled and ran for 1 week.
Still no heat downstairs!
So i learned about air locks.
Upstairs rads were fine and bled, so turned them all off at just 1 side as normal.
One at a time, isolated each radiator, bled out pressue, removed whole bleed nut(i think its called) attached a plastic nut to hose adapter.
Then i opened one side of the radiator fully for a few seconds, from what i can tell, a few bubles came out, turned that side off, did the other side.
Moved on to the next rad.
Every time i did this, hot water came through one side as expected, so the hot feed must be fine.
The cold side also generated high pressure as expected.
So this is where i am up to.
All upstairs radiators turned off, no heat downstairs.
Hot and cold feed seem to be fine to me.
pump seems to be working fine.
I have no idea what to do, the hot water is being pushed into the radiators, the cold water will flow backwards at force, so i assume the pipe isn't blocked.
Any ideas or questions extremely appriciated
