Cold radiators downstairs

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Glasgow
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Hi,
Bare with me as this is a long story.
In January, house had hot water, no central heating...all radiators were cold.
Everything seemed to be working..had pilot light, pump was doing what it should...just cold radiators...reading your suggestions, I thought there was sludge in the system.
So I went out and bought sludge remover and put this in the header tank. I waited about 1 hour but still no heat.
A friend suggested we try (You'll know what I mean)moving the switch on the wee silver box to "manual" and it worked for a short period of time, as although we still had hot water and heat upstairs, the 2 radiators downstairs were stone cold. Heat would only come through intermittently.
After a few weeks, I again thought maybe all the sludge has sunk to the bottom end of the system...so I drained the whole system..not once or twice, but about 5 times now, And the problem is still the same, hot upstairs, cold downstairs. I have even tried turning the pump up to the 3rd mark to see if the extra power would flush the system..but no luck.
So now about the system.....I have 5 radiators in the house, 3 upstairs and 2 downstairs. as I said upstairs is fine but downstairs the in and out pipes to both radiators are cold. Pump is in a cupboard upstairs beside hot water tank...boiler is downstairs in kitchen.
Now my next venture is to balance the system...but being a poor helpless (yeah that'll be right ;) ) woman, i'm not exactly sure how its done as I dont have radiator thermomitters as i've read you need these....
anyway...do you think this could be the problem? and if not...what could it be???

:rolleyes:
 
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First , check your tank that feeds CH has water in it.
Check all rads have water in them and all valves are open.
Bleed all the rads until water comes out.

With your CH on, close all hot rads and see if the pipes leading to cold rads heat up.
If they do but rads still do not heat up, you know you have a blockage and will need flushing out.
Are you sure these cold rads are not on another circuit and am controlled by a Zone valve? :D
 
Hi, nope..as far as I can see..all rads are on the same system.Its only a wee house and pipes are quite easy to follow. Header tank that feeds system has water in it.
Anyway...I tried there to balance the system...opened all the valves on both ends of both radiators and tried to reset them ...both bottom rads are still cold....Loads of black gunk came out of the valve thats usually covered....
I guess there is a blockage somewhere between the upper and lower rads.
I know how to remove radiators to flush them through with a hose but what if there is a blockage in the pipework some where...how to you flush that out?
I thought thats what the sludge remover was for? :rolleyes:
 
Teeny-bash said:
I thought thats what the sludge remover was for? :rolleyes:

It only loosens it, you will still have to drain it out :LOL:

Best thing for you to do is attach a hose to a drain off point and open it up until it runs clear.
Do this to all drain off points.
Then, take off all your rads and flush out thoroughly.
See if this does the trick. :D
 
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...i've an update!
I opened all the valves..balanced the system as best I could but still the 2 lower rads were cold.
I switched off all rads upstairs then opened the air valves on lower rads and filled about 2 buckets of water from each one.
The smaller of the 2 started to heat up..so I switched that one off and concentrated on the larger one that was still cold...eventually it started to heat up, but when I started to open all the other rads (I've only opened them partly) the rads downstairs have started to cool again.
does this sound like a pump that is on its last legs???
 
Hi ChrisR,
I think thats what I just done earlier this evening.
With hot rads closed off...cold rads started to heat up but when I started to open the upstairs rads...the biggest one downstairs has gone cold...although now thats the only one thats cold...the smaller of the 2 is , I'd say working fine now.
I checked the pump again when the system was cold...I undid the screw in the middle and with a pen, made sure the wee spring thing inside
(got this plumbing talk down to a fine art now!) was working fine...It doesn't appear to be jammed or blocked or anything...the pump seems to be working fine..although very noisily.
Could it be knacked?
:rolleyes:
 
Yes. Noisy pumps are finished, and often run slow. Sludge wears them out.

Sounds like you might have to get jiggy with a hose and that big rad, in the garden. A spare bloke would be handy if you have one.
 
Thanks ChrisR for the info.....Will get to it after work.
Can't stand the cold at the best of times...Although I still often wonder why i'm still living in the West Coast of Scotland and not somewhere hot and sunny ????
I guess W/C Scotland is better than the South Pole Eh! :LOL:
 
Hi....Sorry guys......One last question.
When buying a new pump...what is the best type to get...Its a Gold one thats in at the moment..but I don't understand this 5m or 6m stuff...
Also whats the better...Grundfoss or Gold???
;)
 
The Wilo Gold ones are particularly susceptible to wearing out when there's grot in the system, I'm assured.
No such thing as a BAD pump afaik but Grundfos are reckoned to be the best. 5m is what you want, so a 15-50.
 

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