Heating & HW advice

[Wet&Cold]

Firstly, I'd like to say thank you, I've been lurking about on this forum for a month or so and I've solved most of my immediate problems with the help of the advice I found here ..

Some info to start, this may be a bit long but bear with me :

I have a Y-Plan system, Honeywell 3 way valve, stat & controller with a Grundfos 15/50 pump and an Ideal Elan 2 boiler.

Which all stopped working a month or so back.

I admit liability, I've ignored the whole lot for years so it was inevitable really.

Initially I decided my problems were sludge related, so I drained the CH system & refilled it, which caused 3 rads to develop leaks .. replaced leaky rads .. refilled with sludge remover in the system .. still no heat .. replaced the pump .. bled everything a lot .. balanced as best I can ..

So, now I have heat .. almost ..

The problem(s) now are basically that the boiler will only start if I reset the overheat (I'm guessing here) trip switch, it'll run for a while and the rads get warm(ish) but then it trips out ..

The second problem which may be related (I'm guessing again), is that the hot water mixer tap in the kitchen will only run for a couple of minutes before it reduces to a trickle .. hot water is fine upstairs both the bath & sink in the bathroom are spot on. The tap in the kitchen is the only one downstairs btw.

You can likely guess I know nothing about plumbing & even less about heating engineering .. but any advice would be appreciated. I don't want to mess with boiler for obvious reasons but if there's something I can do easily then I'd like to get it sorted.

I'm guessing either airlock or tap washer with the tap issue, but I really don't have a clue what I'm talking about

The boiler thing, I'm happy to get an engineer if necessary and I'm planning on getting a pro to service it soon anyway ..

Cheers for not falling into a coma ..

 

[ChrisR]

I drained the CH system & refilled it, which caused 3 rads to develop leaks

refilled with sludge remover in the system

WHich one?

SOunds like an airlock on the kitchen HW. Connect washig machine taps together to force mains up pipe - open hw tap and it should gush while doing it but then shut it to send water up hw pipe for 10 second bursts to see if air clears. If no luck check for water shooting out of vent over CW cistern and stop it with your thumb, try again. Needs 2 people.

CH problem sounds like air too. Bled at HW cylinder input pipes? Could be blocked feed pipe. COuld try mains hose on drain cock to push water/air up system. Needs 2-3 people really.

 

[Wet&Cold]

Cheers Chris, I'll give it a go if I can find a suitable victim to help .. it was Sentinel X400 remover btw, it's still in there. I'm planning to leave it a week or so, hopefully it'll do what it says on the tin ..

 

[ChrisR]

Well it might, but it isn't very active. Try leaving it a month or 6 weeks. And it won't clear a hard-blocked feed pipe. Even DS40 can have trouble doing that, there's no circulation witnin the feed pipe of course. See if a magnet sticks to it.

 

[Wet&Cold]

Forgot to say, there's a drain point on the lower part of HW cylinder, I haven't messed with that, looks painted shut anyway. Also, there's what looks to be a vent pipe near the HW cylinder, it's vertical with a cap over the top, I did open that and unsurprisingly got wet ..