Hi, this is bit long, but please stay with me as I really need some advice!
Just moved into an early 1970's house with a Glo-worm 54F back boiler / flame effect fire front.
The system has a small HW Immersion tank, gravity fed to the boiler and an underfloor pump for the CH to 10 rads, with no diverter valve fitted.
I'm aware of the limitation of this design where you must have HW On to have CH, but even though the roomstat is kicking the CH pump in and out correctly and the boiler fires up, the rads won't warm through until some HW is drawn down first, then everthing goes fine for the rest of the day
That said, the Rads at the end of the loop do take a long time to warm up, and i've noticed the HW is always really hot and doesn't seem to repond to dialling-down the HW tank's strap on stat. The HW tank is too small BTW, and you have to wait some while to draw a 2nd bath.
A friend who used to fit CH systems has looked at the system and noted that the loft HW header tank's water is warm and very dirty. he also noticed that two extra rads had been tapped into the system (extending end of loop) at some later stage for a 2 storey extension and that the Back Boiler is probably underpowered.
The CH pump is providing a good pressure, so we drained the sysem down, introduced a cleaner and then flushed out 2 weeks later - an awful lot of black glutinous debri came out of a rad we had to remove to set up a drain point. The sytem was fully de-air locked when we brought it back up.
This hasn't really fixed anything - possibly speeded up the warm through slightly
My friend has recommended a complete re-install - isolating the Gloworm's boiler (although leaving the fire front active), fresh installing a Worcester 35CDI HE Combi and replacing all the rads with new. He will also fit an electric shower as our existing Power Shower will not function.
He has agreed to get the parts and do the job wit hme helping for only £1800 - which seems an awfully good deal indeed. He also wants to replace the 22mm pipes with new 15mm for efficiency / pressure reasons.
However, would it be better to just get the existing system running properly instead - if so, do you have any ideas what's wrong please - or should I just grasp the nettle and get a modern high efficiency system?
On a final note, we really like our good Showers. The fitted one is only a Mirage 2000 Power Shower and nowhere near the most powerful, but I'm worried that an electric thermostatic shower even running from mains CW pressure would be a real retrograde step.
My friend's solution is for another £200 more he can fit a Conventional Boiler, make the system fully pumped and put a bigger HW tank in so that we can keep / future upgrade the Power Shower - but obviously we would lose some of the efficiency the Combi would give.
I'm completely stalled here, but really need to do something - what would you advise please?
All ideas gratefully receievd.
Kind Regards
Dig
Just moved into an early 1970's house with a Glo-worm 54F back boiler / flame effect fire front.
The system has a small HW Immersion tank, gravity fed to the boiler and an underfloor pump for the CH to 10 rads, with no diverter valve fitted.
I'm aware of the limitation of this design where you must have HW On to have CH, but even though the roomstat is kicking the CH pump in and out correctly and the boiler fires up, the rads won't warm through until some HW is drawn down first, then everthing goes fine for the rest of the day
That said, the Rads at the end of the loop do take a long time to warm up, and i've noticed the HW is always really hot and doesn't seem to repond to dialling-down the HW tank's strap on stat. The HW tank is too small BTW, and you have to wait some while to draw a 2nd bath.
A friend who used to fit CH systems has looked at the system and noted that the loft HW header tank's water is warm and very dirty. he also noticed that two extra rads had been tapped into the system (extending end of loop) at some later stage for a 2 storey extension and that the Back Boiler is probably underpowered.
The CH pump is providing a good pressure, so we drained the sysem down, introduced a cleaner and then flushed out 2 weeks later - an awful lot of black glutinous debri came out of a rad we had to remove to set up a drain point. The sytem was fully de-air locked when we brought it back up.
This hasn't really fixed anything - possibly speeded up the warm through slightly
My friend has recommended a complete re-install - isolating the Gloworm's boiler (although leaving the fire front active), fresh installing a Worcester 35CDI HE Combi and replacing all the rads with new. He will also fit an electric shower as our existing Power Shower will not function.
He has agreed to get the parts and do the job wit hme helping for only £1800 - which seems an awfully good deal indeed. He also wants to replace the 22mm pipes with new 15mm for efficiency / pressure reasons.
However, would it be better to just get the existing system running properly instead - if so, do you have any ideas what's wrong please - or should I just grasp the nettle and get a modern high efficiency system?
On a final note, we really like our good Showers. The fitted one is only a Mirage 2000 Power Shower and nowhere near the most powerful, but I'm worried that an electric thermostatic shower even running from mains CW pressure would be a real retrograde step.
My friend's solution is for another £200 more he can fit a Conventional Boiler, make the system fully pumped and put a bigger HW tank in so that we can keep / future upgrade the Power Shower - but obviously we would lose some of the efficiency the Combi would give.
I'm completely stalled here, but really need to do something - what would you advise please?
All ideas gratefully receievd.
Kind Regards
Dig
