Hi All
Apologies for the length of this message - wanted to get as much down as possible!
Over the last couple of years, I've had the age-old "some of my radiators aren't getting warm" issue. I have fixed a couple of the radiators, but am wondering what to do next for the others.
For background, the details are:
- 3 story town house
- Gravity fed system
- Hot water tank is on the top floor
- Boiler is on the middle floor in the kitchen
- It's a microbore system, with plastic pipework joining onto metal to go to the rads and push-fit connectors.
- 16 rads in total, all except 1 have TRVs
In total, I've had 5 of those radiators not heating up, and have previously used Sentinel X400 for several weeks, but with no luck.
What I have found to be an issue (which has fixed 2 of the 5) is that where the plastic pipework joins to the metal pipework and subsequently the rad, the end of the metal pipe has been clogged up / corroded?
To fix them, I've had to cut holes in my wall
take apart this joint and scrape away at the blockage. And I do mean scrape.
However, 3 of the radiators (1 on each floor) this hasn't worked for. One of them had a complete blockage, another was partially blocked, and actually I've not attacked the third yet as I ran out of time.
The one that was partially blocked gets a very very small amount of heat - the "flow" pipe is hot (I say "flow" as it's the one with the lockshield, but is the one getting hot - another rad in the same room seems to have the TRV on the flow end).
The other one is stone cold for flow and return.
I've tried to "blast" the heating through them by turning off all of the other radiators, but this just sends the boiler into lockout - so there has to be a blockage somewhere else right?
Does anyone have any suggestions/thoughts?
Thanks!
Paul
Apologies for the length of this message - wanted to get as much down as possible!
Over the last couple of years, I've had the age-old "some of my radiators aren't getting warm" issue. I have fixed a couple of the radiators, but am wondering what to do next for the others.
For background, the details are:
- 3 story town house
- Gravity fed system
- Hot water tank is on the top floor
- Boiler is on the middle floor in the kitchen
- It's a microbore system, with plastic pipework joining onto metal to go to the rads and push-fit connectors.
- 16 rads in total, all except 1 have TRVs
In total, I've had 5 of those radiators not heating up, and have previously used Sentinel X400 for several weeks, but with no luck.
What I have found to be an issue (which has fixed 2 of the 5) is that where the plastic pipework joins to the metal pipework and subsequently the rad, the end of the metal pipe has been clogged up / corroded?
To fix them, I've had to cut holes in my wall
take apart this joint and scrape away at the blockage. And I do mean scrape.However, 3 of the radiators (1 on each floor) this hasn't worked for. One of them had a complete blockage, another was partially blocked, and actually I've not attacked the third yet as I ran out of time.
The one that was partially blocked gets a very very small amount of heat - the "flow" pipe is hot (I say "flow" as it's the one with the lockshield, but is the one getting hot - another rad in the same room seems to have the TRV on the flow end).
The other one is stone cold for flow and return.
I've tried to "blast" the heating through them by turning off all of the other radiators, but this just sends the boiler into lockout - so there has to be a blockage somewhere else right?
Does anyone have any suggestions/thoughts?
Thanks!
Paul
