Hi all,
I'm new here, and after browsing the forum a little it seems there's a whole lot of expertise here! I'm having a bit of a central heating nightmare at the moment, first I'll describe the system a little....
I live in a 2 bed duplex (2 floors) flat, which is a strange design converted from a huge old Victorian house, and as such is very spread out.
I have a Potterton Profile (I think it's a 30 or 40e....Doesn't say anywhere on it) boiler, which is connected to an open vented system with gravity fed hot water. There is no electric valve anywhere in sight.
The boiler is situated in a compartment upstairs, and the expansion tank is directly above the boiler (about 12 inches above!). The hot water cylinder is downstairs in the bathroom airing cupboard, and has no stat that I can see.
Upstairs there are 2 rads, downstairs there are 7. It's a landlord owned property, and before I moved in all the pipework was switched from narrow bore to wide bore (about 1.5cm cross section I think..) pipes by a non-corgi Polish plumber.
The pipes go under the floorboards from the boiler, and travel downstairs via the airing cupboard, then go under the floorboards into the unheated basement to travel to all the rads.
My problem is that the rads just don't get hot enough! I have the heating programmed to be on for about 8 hours a day, and last week I had a gas bill, £200 for 2 months. This seems highly excessive, so I instantly thought the system must be loosing a huge amount of efficiency somewhere....
British Gas came round to have a look at it all, and the bloke was horrified at the design of the system. He told me the expansion tank is not high enough to provide enough pressure for a system that size, and it's just sucking air into the system. He also told me that the pipes that travel downstairs to the 7 rads downstairs should be 1 inch wide bore pipes, whereas in fact they are the same as the pipes feeding each radiator. He said simply fitting a more powerful pump wouldn't solve the problem, it would just suck more and more air into the system.
He reccomended having it converted to a sealed system, and said we would probably get away with the small(er) bore pipes feeding the downstairs rads if it was sealed.
So, what do people think of this reccomendation? Is my boiler compatible with a sealed system? I have a plumber coming round tommorrow (corgi registered according to the landlord) and I just want a second opinion before I say yes to any work!
Also, how easy would it be to fix a 3 way valve and stat to the hot water tank? Is that a big/expensive job to do at the same time? I'd really like to try and lower my bills - initial thoughts are that the flat just isn't getting up to the roomstat temperature due to poor plumbing, but the boiler is going flat out!
Many thanks,
Chris.
I'm new here, and after browsing the forum a little it seems there's a whole lot of expertise here! I'm having a bit of a central heating nightmare at the moment, first I'll describe the system a little....
I live in a 2 bed duplex (2 floors) flat, which is a strange design converted from a huge old Victorian house, and as such is very spread out.
I have a Potterton Profile (I think it's a 30 or 40e....Doesn't say anywhere on it) boiler, which is connected to an open vented system with gravity fed hot water. There is no electric valve anywhere in sight.
The boiler is situated in a compartment upstairs, and the expansion tank is directly above the boiler (about 12 inches above!). The hot water cylinder is downstairs in the bathroom airing cupboard, and has no stat that I can see.
Upstairs there are 2 rads, downstairs there are 7. It's a landlord owned property, and before I moved in all the pipework was switched from narrow bore to wide bore (about 1.5cm cross section I think..) pipes by a non-corgi Polish plumber.
The pipes go under the floorboards from the boiler, and travel downstairs via the airing cupboard, then go under the floorboards into the unheated basement to travel to all the rads.
My problem is that the rads just don't get hot enough! I have the heating programmed to be on for about 8 hours a day, and last week I had a gas bill, £200 for 2 months. This seems highly excessive, so I instantly thought the system must be loosing a huge amount of efficiency somewhere....
British Gas came round to have a look at it all, and the bloke was horrified at the design of the system. He told me the expansion tank is not high enough to provide enough pressure for a system that size, and it's just sucking air into the system. He also told me that the pipes that travel downstairs to the 7 rads downstairs should be 1 inch wide bore pipes, whereas in fact they are the same as the pipes feeding each radiator. He said simply fitting a more powerful pump wouldn't solve the problem, it would just suck more and more air into the system.
He reccomended having it converted to a sealed system, and said we would probably get away with the small(er) bore pipes feeding the downstairs rads if it was sealed.
So, what do people think of this reccomendation? Is my boiler compatible with a sealed system? I have a plumber coming round tommorrow (corgi registered according to the landlord) and I just want a second opinion before I say yes to any work!
Also, how easy would it be to fix a 3 way valve and stat to the hot water tank? Is that a big/expensive job to do at the same time? I'd really like to try and lower my bills - initial thoughts are that the flat just isn't getting up to the roomstat temperature due to poor plumbing, but the boiler is going flat out!
Many thanks,
Chris.