Central heating woes

[fixitflav]

Where you I put the inhibitor in? Somewhere on the magna filter?

Yes, that's the ideal place for taking a water sample for a bright wire nail corrosion test, and for adding inhibitor

 

[gas112]

It can be done, but there is a risk. Safer, easier for a novice to just accept the need to drain.

What risk ? its a combi

 

[twodoctors]

Thanks all who helped me with this.

Managed to swap the two radiators and valves yesterday. Took me about 5.5 hours, including draining and refilling the system! So I guess it would have taken a pro 3 hours perhaps. Saved £400 so that's always good.

The problems I encountered were difficulty removing the old olive from the old pipe. It was over-squashed, and I only have a big hacksaw with me (not a junior one). I had to reuse that olive, which was a bad idea as the it leaked a bit when I refill the system. Took everything off again and I wrapped some PTFE tape on it and fortunately that worked.

Also had to swap and extra lockshield valve as the one that was on had a bigger fitting on the radiator end (22mm?). Also had difficulty taking the old olive off. Fortunately the joint on that one didn't leak.

Finally the radiators downstairs didn't really drain. Certainly the one furthest from the boiler did not drain at all. When I open the air valve I just had water coming out instead! The one I needed to swap still had water in it. Fortunately I have wet and dry vacuum, so I did what Mark Ballard taught me on YouTube and vacuum out the water. Great tip and works very well. Would have been waiting a lot time for that to drain otherwise.

I might attempt to upgrade 2 of the downstairs radiator to a "designer" one now (if the wife agrees to throwing the radiators cover away)...