Lukewarm central heating on Intergas Rapid 32

Below is a photo of the only used radiator I installed (everything else was new), it is not very big and even flushed it with the garden hose before installing it:



Below is a photo of the water drained through the magnetic filer:




Because there was a bit of sludge in the flow CH pipe, I was told I had to clean the whole system (ie there should be no sludge going through the magnetic filter / boiler all the way to the flow CH pipe).

I appreciate that radiator might have introduced a bit of sludge, but I would have expected the boiler being able to cope.

I was told I had to clean the system, and they would do a good will gesture replacing the pump if it seizes.

Razor900 said:

They all carry test kits, did he take a sample of system water for analysis?

Click to expand...

Nope, he took some photos though.

Even if the system was new a flush should have been done. New rads always have loads of crap in them.

The good news it it’s almost certainly just the boiler that needs doing

To close on this thread, I managed to get the system to heat each radiator properly by simply draining the full system, ie:
- I opened the draining valves (I have 2 for each zone)
- I opened the bleeding valve on each of the 10 radiators
- I opened the bleeding valve on the boiler
- I manually opened both zone valves
- I let the system drain for a couple of hours
- I refilled the system

Then the boiler was working normally.

After doing the above I contacted Intergas who advised me the whole system needed to be cleaned / flushed as they claimed it was an issue with the system being dirty (specially inside of the pipes near / in the boiler). I had this done professionally by my plumber (spent around 5 hours on it), and really there was very little dirt / sludge. My plumber had another customer with exactly the same issue with that boiler a couple of month ago, though in his case the system never heated the radiators properly.

If the boiler is not at fault, it is extremely disappointing it cannot cope with a minimum of dirt/sludge and I was forced to spend hundreds of pounds just to prove my system is clean. I can now only wait and hope it is not going to happen again.

Hopefully my final question, what kind of cable is used to connect a laptop to the boiler? I guess the service software is not available to download? I would like to check if the boiler is efficiently heating water as I kinda lost confidence in it.

Thanks for the update, I'm surprised at the outcome.

I dropped the filter on mine a few days ago, and was surprised how clean the filter was, not even any deposits on the magnet... although the water was slightly green, I have an UFH room as well. It had biocide in it, but I'm going to dose it again before it gets worse... I was surprised as I was thinking the algae would be circulating around, surely the boiler can't be that picky?


Anyway, glad you've sorted.

Chibs