Hi All, apologies for the relatively long post here.
I decided to put some inhibitor in my central heating system. I drained down a fair bit (maybe 25litres) and put some Fernox F1 in the feed and expansion tank. I cleaned the tank out beforehand as there was some brown layer in the bottom of it but didnt look too bad, was more for my peace of mind. Refilled the system by turning stop cock back on, and all was well other than an air lock in 2 rads which i soon cleared. Later that day i put the heating on and the boiler made a loud vibrating noise, eventually going to lockout with FL code. Found that the condense trap was blocked with grey sludge, badly, was full of it. I cleared that out, and all worked well again. I still get a bit of a vibrating whoop (!) noise for a second or so, when initially firing up and can hear a faint running water occasionally, but then its fine. It may have done this before the heating drain down and re-fill, it's certainly not really loud.
My questions are:
1. Why would draining the heating and re-filling cause the condense trap to get blocked? Or was it just co-incidence?
2. Is there anything that i could have done that caused the vibrating noise from the boiler in the first place? I have done some research and understand the condense trap is a common issue, and don't think the boiler has been serviced for years (only moved in recently).
Thanks in advance.
I decided to put some inhibitor in my central heating system. I drained down a fair bit (maybe 25litres) and put some Fernox F1 in the feed and expansion tank. I cleaned the tank out beforehand as there was some brown layer in the bottom of it but didnt look too bad, was more for my peace of mind. Refilled the system by turning stop cock back on, and all was well other than an air lock in 2 rads which i soon cleared. Later that day i put the heating on and the boiler made a loud vibrating noise, eventually going to lockout with FL code. Found that the condense trap was blocked with grey sludge, badly, was full of it. I cleared that out, and all worked well again. I still get a bit of a vibrating whoop (!) noise for a second or so, when initially firing up and can hear a faint running water occasionally, but then its fine. It may have done this before the heating drain down and re-fill, it's certainly not really loud.
My questions are:
1. Why would draining the heating and re-filling cause the condense trap to get blocked? Or was it just co-incidence?
2. Is there anything that i could have done that caused the vibrating noise from the boiler in the first place? I have done some research and understand the condense trap is a common issue, and don't think the boiler has been serviced for years (only moved in recently).
Thanks in advance.
