Hi, I have recently moved into a 1960s house with all plumbing more or less untouched from the 1960s.
I'm struggling to understand what is going on and am hoping someone on here will be able to help me out! I was expecting 3 tanks in the loft space - a large cold water one and 2 smaller F&E ones for the central heating system and hot water. Well when I looked I found none at all, which confused me greatly. Ok, no large tank as all the cold taps are fed directly from the mains. My first question is why do some houses have a big tank and others don't?
Now I found the hot water tank and this looks like a fortic type with a small tank directly on top of the water tank. Green corrosion all over the tank where most connections have been leaking for years. Now I ran the hot taps and the tank in the top of the cylinder started to fill - so I assumed this was the hot water expansion tank.
However I wondered where was the central heating expansion tank? So I opened a radiator drain valve and listened for water and the same tank started to fill as for the hot water. This puzzled me for a while, but searching on here has made me think that I have a primatic fortic tank so there is an air bubble that separates the heating water and also allows for expansion of the heating water, does that sound correct? I have also probably destroyed the air bubble now as I can't get any water out of the hot taps now - but don't mind as the tank has to go anyway.
I have already bought a Heatre Sadia Mega Flo pressurised cylinder as a replacement as I would like good mains pressure hot water and don't want another header tank. However this leaves me with a problem - what about the heating expansion tank. If I'm right, this was previously done in the primatic cylinder, so I assume I will either need a new header tank fitted (which I don't want to do) or go to a pressurised system with an expansion vessel. Is this easy to do and are there any likely problems that I will come across?
Any help and advice greatly welcomed...
I'm struggling to understand what is going on and am hoping someone on here will be able to help me out! I was expecting 3 tanks in the loft space - a large cold water one and 2 smaller F&E ones for the central heating system and hot water. Well when I looked I found none at all, which confused me greatly. Ok, no large tank as all the cold taps are fed directly from the mains. My first question is why do some houses have a big tank and others don't?
Now I found the hot water tank and this looks like a fortic type with a small tank directly on top of the water tank. Green corrosion all over the tank where most connections have been leaking for years. Now I ran the hot taps and the tank in the top of the cylinder started to fill - so I assumed this was the hot water expansion tank.
However I wondered where was the central heating expansion tank? So I opened a radiator drain valve and listened for water and the same tank started to fill as for the hot water. This puzzled me for a while, but searching on here has made me think that I have a primatic fortic tank so there is an air bubble that separates the heating water and also allows for expansion of the heating water, does that sound correct? I have also probably destroyed the air bubble now as I can't get any water out of the hot taps now - but don't mind as the tank has to go anyway.
I have already bought a Heatre Sadia Mega Flo pressurised cylinder as a replacement as I would like good mains pressure hot water and don't want another header tank. However this leaves me with a problem - what about the heating expansion tank. If I'm right, this was previously done in the primatic cylinder, so I assume I will either need a new header tank fitted (which I don't want to do) or go to a pressurised system with an expansion vessel. Is this easy to do and are there any likely problems that I will come across?
Any help and advice greatly welcomed...