Is power flushing worth £200 ?

Paul Barker · 7 Oct 2006

Yes well I'm almost in your camp since I'm only a member of the powerflush class of persons and now realise that to be accepoted into club class I will need to spend a G on a JET flusher.

Pretty soon we'll be told we need to be using Radiator Exploders costing 5 grand, and if we don't no manufacturer will repair the boilers we fit.

As I see it use of the right chemicals and the right approach can get a system clean. Always flush through a magnetic filter and aslong as customer isn't stupid enough not to pay £100 to protect their investment that cost them over £1,000 fitted in some parts of the country over £2,000 put one on the return pipe before you leave. I maintain a goodly stock of Boiler Buddy's and Magnacleans.

chr15 · 7 Oct 2006

Paul, which do you think is the better of the two-magna clean or boiler buddy or are they the same thing or for two types of application-have to start looking at these-they look a really good idea.

chrishutt · 7 Oct 2006

chr15 said:
What did we do 10 years ago when powerflushing wasn't heard of

Same as we do today, if we've got a bit of initiative. A mains water flush, as excellently described in detail in the Wiki or the FAQ topic, can be just as effective as the best so called power flush. After all the pressure available from the mains is usually 2 bar or more - how many PF machines can beat that?

Unfortunately mains flushing isn't a marketable product (it's freely available to anyone able to think for themselves - a niche market apparently), so no one has a vested interest in promoting it or hyping it up. I merely draw people's attention to it from time to time, but most seem to be suckers for the hard sell of PF.

Agile · 7 Oct 2006

Chris, whilst I appreciate that you may not have a power flusher or want to get one, there is a distinct difference.

I agree with you that flushing with mains water does get a lot of loose debris out if the mains is at a suitable pressure and flow.

I would also agree with anyone else that circulating suitable chemicals for a few weeks is also very effective.

However the real difference is that power flushing with a pump combines vigourous action with chemical action and constitutes a relatively quick cleaning action that must be better that either a chemical clean or a mains water flush.

Many "power flushes" are NOT done properly by employees of some firms either because they dont know or they are lazy. They tell me this! A typical scenario is to leave the pump running for a few hours but the radiators are never touched during this time and the pump just circulates in one direction.

Tony

chrishutt · 7 Oct 2006

I take your point Tony, but it is perfectly possible to combine mains flushing and chemical treatment. I first do a mains flush to remove virtually all the loose material. I then fill with a system cleaner and leave system to operate as recommended by the system cleaner manufacturer. I then return and mains flush again, finally filling with inhibitor.

Given that even power flushing does not claim to remove all the deposits, I cannot see why mains flushing as described above cannot be just as effective, and more cost-effective, given that PF machines are expensive to buy and awkward to store and transport.

Agile · 7 Oct 2006

I agree that a mains flush followed by a chemical clean should be equally effective as a power flush. But that needs to be done over a few days.

The difference come in the time scale. A power flush takes 3-5 hours and can be done during a boiler installation.

The vast majority of boiler replacements I hear of are as a result of a boiler failure rather then just updating. In that case getting the new boiler running is urgent and power flushing is the quickest way of achieving a cleaned system.

I dont really agree that a power flushing pump is terribly expensive as just one item of an RGIs equipment, a £10k van, £1k FGA, all the tools etc and £5k of boiler spares make the power flusher less than 10% of the expenditure.

There are many cases where power flushing is asked of smaller firms by people quoted £500 by BG. Being able to take on that work is a distinct advantage and many RGIs create a turnover of £10k a year from a power flusher costing less than £1k.

Tony

ChrisR · 7 Oct 2006

Just once I did a sort of experiment on a bad system, much as ChrisHutt describes. First used garden hose (4 bar) onto the pump with f/e bunged to get a lot of crud out, one rad at a time.
Then put superfloc in for about 10 days and connected up flusher at the pump. Pumped to and fro & banged until each rad clear. The water was certainly grubby but not really awful. Then put the mains on again, and went round each rad one more time because the water had gone dark again.

Flow was obviously much higher with the mains than with the Kamco flusher (1.4 bar iirc). My feeling was that the flusher hadn't got much out that the mains didn't, but without measuring the weight of the stuff it's hard to tell.

One thing which came to light that time was that the HW circuit short-circuits the pressure to the rads, on a Y plan. So now I remove the valve head and put a small spanner on the shaft, tied over to hold it shut.

Another place, all downstairs rads very slow with the furthers hardly working at all. I didn't want to spend long so connected the garden tap to a rad valve via two 2.5m washing machine hoses in series (easy!). Flow wasn't great, as would be expected through that and back. Didn't need to bung the f/e as long as there was a path open for the water. Put the flow through the downstairs rads one at a time until the water came clear - a heck of a lot of grot came out. Then replaced radiator - all over in a couple of hours. Customer has all rads hot so is very happy. I think I charged him £80!

chrishutt · 7 Oct 2006

Thanks for that post, ChrisR, which I think confirms what I have been arguing. Few installers seem to be aware of the potential for mains flushing. I doubt whether it is taught at all in colleges, and it's not promoted by anyone except myself, as far as I know.

As for completing a system clean within a day, that's perfectly possible if the chemical clean phase uses a fast acting cleaner (Ferroquest/X800 perhaps?). No reason why it shouldn't be done in parallel with a boiler installation either, it just requires a bit of lateral thinking as demonstrated by ChrisR above.

Paul Barker · 7 Oct 2006

chr15 said:
Paul, which do you think is the better of the two-magna clean or boiler buddy or are they the same thing or for two types of application-have to start looking at these-they look a really good idea.

The magnaclean has more powerful magnets but the boiler buddy has more opportunity to trap the sludge. It's probably even stevens.

The only thing is the boiler buddy is smaller, though it does require the ability to use pump valves.

Of late when changing an old system into a system boiler system I have been putting a boiler buddy in place of the pump for my convenience. Otherwise I tend to use a magnaclean as it is more readily serviced by the user, and will probably not require such frequent cleaning out, as it seems less likely to clog up.

Paul Barker · 7 Oct 2006

On the powerflushing side, yes the dhw circulation requires fitting of a gate valve if a balancing one isn't present or the effort is lost down that route.

I am not too sure how effective the powerflush is on a zone valve against the a to b direction of the valve. Yesterday we were flushing an s plan system, and I was wandering whether it was actually doing anything when direction is b to a.

We did leave it running while we went for lunch it is true, but nevertheless we were flushing for the whole day, first with water then with FX2 then with water. Then when we started up the new boiler we flushed that with hot fresh water before finally filling up with inhibitor. It is a full days work, and hellish monotonous, and very good exercise on the legs trapsing round the rads time and again, but it saves a re-visit later.

Paul Barker · 7 Oct 2006

Thinking about the s plan reverse direction problem, maybe the best thing is to flush two rads at a time, so that the flushing circulation will use the other rad as a route, if you get what I mean, or else the zone valve would have to be taken out of circuit.

I still feel quite inadequte with my little machine and just yearnm for the day I can afford a jetflush so I can do the job in half the time and get home in time for tea for once.

chrishutt · 7 Oct 2006

Paul Barker said:
I still feel quite inadequte with my little machine .

So upgrade to mains flushing.

the plumbing miracle · 7 Oct 2006

You guys are all the same benchmark CrAzY the risks involving powerflushing a system are extensiveYou can open alot of problems on an old system.

Lets just say you have powerflushed a system,on radiators say 15 years old, do you mean to tell me that after a powerflush every single bit of rust on the inside of all the radiators has been completely removed and the boiler hydraulics will not block up with small piece of rust which was probably quite happy sticking to the inside of the radiator until you come in with your size 10 s and put pressure on an unsuspecting member of the public with the threat of manufacturer get out clauses

oilman · 7 Oct 2006

It is very unlikely you will get rust in radiators, much more likely to be magnetite. Very heavy stuff which doesn't move about in large lumps, but as a fine suspension. So your gloom and doom and sarcastic remarks are irrelevant. Please provide details of the problem that you have described, and have witnessed (first hand).

simond · 7 Oct 2006

We use Norstrom PF machines which cost just over £1K each.

I would rather use a PF because;

-it is easily reversible without disconnecting filthy hoses
-the cleaning chemicals work better with heat
-the PFs we have include heaters when the boiler is u/s
-we don't like using aggressive cleaners eg Ferroquest
-we prefer using a mild desludger with heat
-mains pressure water can stress older systems and components (eg: motorised valves backwards)
- the process is more controllable
-we need to have a better control over the time out of action for the customer
-it is much easier to ascertain the path of the water round an old pipe system if it is hot
-what if a motor valve snaps shut and you blow the primaries in the cylinder?
- some boilers we use and work on are not rated above 2.5bar

It is my opinion that cold water flushing, or leaving desludger in a hot system on a normal velocity pump is never going to be as effective as a PF. That is why we spend the money on buying and maintaining the plant.

Those boiler installers without a PF are either trying to work out of a small car/estate, or are eager to save themselves money. One of our engineers has just left us after 4 years; first two thinks he bought were a Trafic and a Powerflusher. Don't know how long the Trafic will last but the PF is in our view essential.

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Is power flushing worth £200 ?

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