Is my boiler kettling?

[Graemevw]

Not sure if our heating has an issue or not, its our first house so ive never had to deal with this stuff before.

There are 2 things that im unsure about.
Its a pumped system with gravity hot water, glow worm fuel saver mk2 boiler.

Ive done some work on the heating system but its always had these problems. System has been drained down and re-filled a couple of times in the last week or two for various reasons. I plan to run a cleaner through it (if i should) and add inhibitor when i know i dont need to drain it again.

Anyhow, the possible issues.

One upstairs rad (first from boiler) keeps filling with air. There are no leaks.

Second, the heating works fine, but the boiler turns on, makes a sound like its building pressure (boiling?) then turns off after 30 seconds or so. It just repeats like this, turning on every couple of minutes, making this noise, then turning off.

Rads are all hot, no issues with the actual heating ability.

Thanks.

 

[Agile]

You dont say where you are. Parts of derbyshire like Buxton have very hard water. In those places its not a good idea to refill often like you have been doing. Its not needed anyway, you can turn off rad valves and retain their water content.

It does sound as if you may have a scaled heat exchanger or a reduced flow rate. It might be beneficial to have a professional diagnosis.

If it were lime scale then adding Sentinel X200 to the system and run on HW only with the rad valves turned off.

Tony Glazier

 

[dcawkwell]

If it's doing that it sounds as if there isn't any circulation going on.

Check the pump is actually turning.

 

[Graemevw]

well the pump makes a noise. Ill check it properly.

Would ll the rads warm up (quite quickly) if the pump wasnt working?

The system has been emptied/re-filled because ive re-piped the downstairs as the origional pipes were above the skirting and i wanted them under the floor. It used to do this before as well though so dont think ive done anything wrong.

Our plumber is fully booked for a month so cant come out till then, hence my questions.

I guess i can de-scale the system, wont do any harm right?

As for my area, im in chesterfield.