I have been having a right mare of a time trying to get rid of what I’m guessing is excess air in my CH system. I was hoping that it might miraculously clear itself after fitting a new radiator in my bathroom but I’ve had no luck with that. I can only presume that I must be doing summat wrong so I’m coming “cap in hand” so to speak to all you guys here to see if I can get any pointers. Basically, all my radiators regularly make odd gurgles or “whooshing” noises but when any of the rads we normally have off (room thermostats turned onto frost protection only at about 10˚C) fire-up from the room thermostats calling for heat, they make a right racket. It starts making a sound like blowing across the end of an open pipe while lowering it into water (i.e. tone goes up) until it stops and is followed by a massive gurgling and whooshing noise for about 30 secs, then the tone starts again, although a fair bit quieter followed by another slightly quieter gurgling etc. This then settles down to an occasional odd gurgle. Hope that explains it enough.
My system components are a Worcester Bosch Greenstar 9i Boiler, Magnaclean Filter, radiators are Milano Aruba Flow apart from the bathroom one which is a Stainless Aeon Lunar unit.
Normally by now I would’ve called in a plumber but seeing as I’ve just been made redundant AGAIN after only 5 mths at my latest workplace, money is tight and I would like to try to get it sorted myself as A, I’ve got a fair bit of time to spend on it now and B, it’ll hopefully cost a lot less.
Anyway, I’ve attached a schematic of what my heating pipes look like up in the loft to try to help explain and what I’ve tried up to now is below:
I turned the system off and left it for about 2 hours to cool while I added the new Bathroom radiator. I then closed all the existing rads off, turned on the filling loop and filled the new radiator and bled it. I then locked the valves open and bled all the remaining radiators but got no air out of any of them, then turned the filling loop off. I reset the valves, turned the system on and made sure all thermostats were calling for heat and all rad valves were fully open. Lots of gurgling ensued (as it does normally) for about 15-20 mins and then it quietened down. It was now getting past 7 o-clock so I turned off the bedrooms and hall rads as usual (trying to save a few quid not heating areas we can manage without) and left it running on the normal heat & timing settings. (turns onto frost protection only at 23:00 and comes on at 07:30)
Today I turned all the thermostats on but once the system had got up to heat, turned all the radiators off at their valves and lockshields, then one by one (starting with the closest to the boiler) individually fully opened each rad to the system (was told to do this a while ago by a local plumber as a way of trying to remove an airlock) and let each one run for about 10-15 mins. Once that was completed on all the rads, I turned the system off and let it cool again then bled each radiator again and also the filter in the loft. Again, no air out of the radiators and a just a tiny little hiss out of the filter. According to the boiler manual, there is an automatic vent fitted to it so I shouldn't have anything to bleed within the boiler itself. Funnily enough, after doing all that (and having everything crossed) once I turned the system back on again every bloody rad started making the gurgling noises, so it appeared it got worse than before although it has quietened down a fair bit now.
The other thing I forgot to mention is that every now and then, we can hear the water running through the radiators. It's not a whooshing or gurgling noise, just the sound of water running through pipes and it comes and goes. The boiler pressure hasn’t changed from its usual just over 1 bar when cold to between 1.5 & 2 bar when running flat out and there are no signs of any leaks anywhere.
Sorry for the long post but I've tried to give as much info as possible and I now admit to being completely at a loss so would really appreciate any other methods I can try. Picture below.
TIA.
My system components are a Worcester Bosch Greenstar 9i Boiler, Magnaclean Filter, radiators are Milano Aruba Flow apart from the bathroom one which is a Stainless Aeon Lunar unit.
Normally by now I would’ve called in a plumber but seeing as I’ve just been made redundant AGAIN after only 5 mths at my latest workplace, money is tight and I would like to try to get it sorted myself as A, I’ve got a fair bit of time to spend on it now and B, it’ll hopefully cost a lot less.
Anyway, I’ve attached a schematic of what my heating pipes look like up in the loft to try to help explain and what I’ve tried up to now is below:
I turned the system off and left it for about 2 hours to cool while I added the new Bathroom radiator. I then closed all the existing rads off, turned on the filling loop and filled the new radiator and bled it. I then locked the valves open and bled all the remaining radiators but got no air out of any of them, then turned the filling loop off. I reset the valves, turned the system on and made sure all thermostats were calling for heat and all rad valves were fully open. Lots of gurgling ensued (as it does normally) for about 15-20 mins and then it quietened down. It was now getting past 7 o-clock so I turned off the bedrooms and hall rads as usual (trying to save a few quid not heating areas we can manage without) and left it running on the normal heat & timing settings. (turns onto frost protection only at 23:00 and comes on at 07:30)
Today I turned all the thermostats on but once the system had got up to heat, turned all the radiators off at their valves and lockshields, then one by one (starting with the closest to the boiler) individually fully opened each rad to the system (was told to do this a while ago by a local plumber as a way of trying to remove an airlock) and let each one run for about 10-15 mins. Once that was completed on all the rads, I turned the system off and let it cool again then bled each radiator again and also the filter in the loft. Again, no air out of the radiators and a just a tiny little hiss out of the filter. According to the boiler manual, there is an automatic vent fitted to it so I shouldn't have anything to bleed within the boiler itself. Funnily enough, after doing all that (and having everything crossed) once I turned the system back on again every bloody rad started making the gurgling noises, so it appeared it got worse than before although it has quietened down a fair bit now.
The other thing I forgot to mention is that every now and then, we can hear the water running through the radiators. It's not a whooshing or gurgling noise, just the sound of water running through pipes and it comes and goes. The boiler pressure hasn’t changed from its usual just over 1 bar when cold to between 1.5 & 2 bar when running flat out and there are no signs of any leaks anywhere.
Sorry for the long post but I've tried to give as much info as possible and I now admit to being completely at a loss so would really appreciate any other methods I can try. Picture below.
TIA.
