New loft conversion causing heating problems .....

[Dannyg78]

Hi Peeps,

Great site, you have already helped with the problem I have, i hope you can help resolve the problem.

Right.......basically I had a loft conversion done just before xmas, along with a bathroom and small toilet refurbishment which involved adding one radiator in the loft and removing two other radiators to change the tiles in both bathrooms. On Sunday night we lost all heat in our CH system but the hot water remained on (combi bolier fired by a potterton profile 50e water heater). After 2 nights without heat on what remains to be some of the coldest days I've know in England and alot of earache from the misses the heating has maracilously come back on while we was at work today.

I read a number of threads on this forum last night which contained similar problems and decided to try out some of the advice i could carry out myself first, before calling in an engineer. The one thing i did which i believe has brought the heating back on was that i turned off the supply to the newly installed radiator upsatirs. This morning we awoke to below freezing conditions again in the house but on my return tonight the heating is on.

Does anybody know what my problem is? I orginally thought that we might have a problem with some of the boiler components ei. the pump, mid position valve or the cylinder itself. However, if the heating is back on after turning the new radiator off, is my problem an airlock?

Your time would be greatly appreciated on this one

Regards

Dan

 

[Bahco]

Read the CH FAQs

number 2

 

[Dannyg78]

cheers bahco, will report back when i've worked through these points.

 

[Dannyg78]

Hi All,

I hope someone can help as the cold is becoming unbearable

I've worked through some of those points, drained-refilled, cleaned, bled, and still no heating. I shut the supply to the newly installed radiator in the loft a few days ago and the next day the heating came on again for about 4 days. However, when installing the a new shower I had to once again turn of the water supply and now i'm back to square one with no heating.

This makes me think that I have a water pressure problem, I've come to this conclusion because on the new shower there is a light telling me low water pressure. Plus with the system temporarly coming back to life this tells me i don't have any problem with the parts - boiler, pump, mid valve etc.

Could this be the problem and if so how would i repressurise the system (potterton profile 50e)?

 

[Dannyg78]

Anyone?

 

[namsag]

First profile is not a combi its a standard boiler.
Do you have a pressure gauge around by the boiler
or do you still have a header tank for it and is this higher than rads in loft
Not long done why not call the guys back that altered it

 

[Dannyg78]

First profile is not a combi its a standard boiler.
Do you have a pressure gauge around by the boiler
or do you still have a header tank for it and is this higher than rads in loft
Not long done why not call the guys back that altered it

thanks for the reply. No i don't have a gauge on the boiler, header tank with a pump. The loft radiator is just below the height of my ch tank but only by 10-20 cm.

I have the guy coming round on saturday but i don't think i can wait that long with the cold. It seems like it's a really simple solution to fix....sos

 

[Bahco]

Look at the motorised valve faq here

 

[Dannyg78]

Look at the motorised valve faq here

Is this just me but it appears the faq on this subjet has gone down / doesn't exist

 

[Dannyg78]

found....

 

[Dannyg78]

man this is doing my head in. the motorised valve is responding to the thermostat but this is only running for a few minutes before shutting off again. I've Tried ChrisR's tip on how to get it running manually and that seems to have got the mv to keep running. I'm just waiting now to see if that has done the trick.

I had to take the front off the mv to get the setting on to manual so I don't think the valve is in the best of states. starting to get a bit annoying now, grief from misses etc.

 

[sloppytom]

header tank prob isnt high enough at least half metre above highest part of system

 

[Dannyg78]

header tank prob isnt high enough at least half metre above highest part of system

Just measured it tom and it's approx 40cm above the highest radiator.

sorry for banging on but i'm feeling that i may have a problem with either the motorised valve or my pump, or both.

Am i right in saying that if we have added another radiator in the loft, the extra effort the system has to give to pump round the system may have caused any of the above (or both) not to cope and stop fuctioning? If is this something i could do myself seen as though it's just a matter of draining the system and changing the pumps via compression connections.

And by the way, The radiators are not getting hot from chrisr's post and there is no movement coming from my pump!

 

[sloppytom]

have u taken cap off pump and checked it spinning

 

[Dannyg78]

have u taken cap off pump and checked it spinning

no mate, do i have to drain the system to do that? I suppose it's just the big screw in the centre?