Hi people, this is my first post, but I thought i would share with you my cure for my noisey boiler as this forum has helped me in the past.
I have an old Halstead Boiler ( Wickes 50) that over the last few years has become noisey and has been kettling quite badly. A noise that can be heard throughout the house as it travels through the pipework. As you may well know this noise is caused by build up of limescale and heavy metal deposits baked onto the boilers heat exchanger. Despite using fernox on a regular basis, I have over the past 14 years moved most of my radiators and replaced pipework so during periods of time my system has been running with a lack of inhibitor in it.
About a year ago it started to kettle quite badly and every time the boiler fired up it would create an aweful noise throughout the house. I knew it was due to scale build up and so started my quest to descale my boiler with the following off the shelf products.
Fernox Heavy Duty Descaler.
Sentinel Descaler.
Screwfix No Nonsense boiler silencer.
D200 Descaler.
Despite ensuring that only the primary hot water loop was being treated and with an extra strong dilution of the above chemicals, I found them all to be utter CRAP.
The fact is, that any chemical (Acid) that is actually strong enough to perform this task is not available to the general public as it is deemed to be too dangerous for home use.
A few nights ago, my boiler was so noisey and kettled so badly that it had me awake all night and I could have put a fookin hammer through it. So the following morning I decided to do the job properly.
I stripped the boiler down and removed the heatexchanger completely. This job does not involve breaking into the gas circuit. I am lucky enough to have access to 98% Sulphuric Acid at work, something that 99% of people will not have I agree. But I took the exchanger to work and soaked it in a strong dilute acid solution for 8 hours and the deposits that came out of it were shocking. I reckon I halved the weight of the heat exchanger by removing a combination of limescale and hard black deposits from its inners.
I have just refitted it and the boiler is like new, no noise, heats up in seconds, and must be saving me a few quid on my gas bill. So Heres my advice.
Dont waste your money on ineffective,off the shelf descalers that have the strength of Cola. Find a local place that does metal plating and take the heat exchanger to them. They will have a Hydrochloric acid bath that will strip your exchanger free of deposits in no time at all. They may charge you £20- £30 for doing it, but its better than wasting £60 on off the shelf chemicals that do nothing like I initially did.
I hope this helps somebody else in the future.
Cheers Dave.
I have an old Halstead Boiler ( Wickes 50) that over the last few years has become noisey and has been kettling quite badly. A noise that can be heard throughout the house as it travels through the pipework. As you may well know this noise is caused by build up of limescale and heavy metal deposits baked onto the boilers heat exchanger. Despite using fernox on a regular basis, I have over the past 14 years moved most of my radiators and replaced pipework so during periods of time my system has been running with a lack of inhibitor in it.
About a year ago it started to kettle quite badly and every time the boiler fired up it would create an aweful noise throughout the house. I knew it was due to scale build up and so started my quest to descale my boiler with the following off the shelf products.
Fernox Heavy Duty Descaler.
Sentinel Descaler.
Screwfix No Nonsense boiler silencer.
D200 Descaler.
Despite ensuring that only the primary hot water loop was being treated and with an extra strong dilution of the above chemicals, I found them all to be utter CRAP.
The fact is, that any chemical (Acid) that is actually strong enough to perform this task is not available to the general public as it is deemed to be too dangerous for home use.
A few nights ago, my boiler was so noisey and kettled so badly that it had me awake all night and I could have put a fookin hammer through it. So the following morning I decided to do the job properly.
I stripped the boiler down and removed the heatexchanger completely. This job does not involve breaking into the gas circuit. I am lucky enough to have access to 98% Sulphuric Acid at work, something that 99% of people will not have I agree. But I took the exchanger to work and soaked it in a strong dilute acid solution for 8 hours and the deposits that came out of it were shocking. I reckon I halved the weight of the heat exchanger by removing a combination of limescale and hard black deposits from its inners.
I have just refitted it and the boiler is like new, no noise, heats up in seconds, and must be saving me a few quid on my gas bill. So Heres my advice.
Dont waste your money on ineffective,off the shelf descalers that have the strength of Cola. Find a local place that does metal plating and take the heat exchanger to them. They will have a Hydrochloric acid bath that will strip your exchanger free of deposits in no time at all. They may charge you £20- £30 for doing it, but its better than wasting £60 on off the shelf chemicals that do nothing like I initially did.
I hope this helps somebody else in the future.
Cheers Dave.
