Hello there
I hope someone can advise on a problem that we're having. And apologies in advance if I go into too much background details - not sure what will be useful.
Background
We moved into a new house this summer, which has what looks like a fairly old GlowWorm boiler downstairs, plus a hot water cylinder upstairs. It was the summer, so we never used the central heating, but the hot water worked fine and without incident.
We had plasterers in in the autumn, who took off the radiators without draining the system - I think they just tightened the nuts where the pipes joined the rads. They then came back to reconnect them, turned the heating on to check things worked, and found some rads weren't filling up much, so they went into the loft to poke around, but eventually decided the narrow pipework meant it would take a while for them all to fill.
The problem
The rads are now all working to some extent, but we now have a different problem, which I think coincides with the rads going back on/starting to use the heating. Water drips out from a pipe in the roof onto the garden after we use the shower, or the hot water. I took a look in the loft, and we have a big tank, and a small one, which i believe is the expansion tank from the boiler/hot water cylinder (?). The water is leaking from that smaller one. I noticed that the water level in the tank was about an inch below the overflow pipe, but after turning on the taps and shower it crept to above it without any water dripping in from the pipe that overhangs. It appears the water is coming in from the pipe at the bottom of the tank that I believe is supposed to feed into the hot water cylinder. The float didn't seem to move particularly freely, and sat low in the water, but I'm not sure if this is related. I bent it down a bit in any event.
I read in another thread on this forum something that sounded similar, where the advice from 'Bahco' was that it was caused by a split coil and a new cylinder was required. Does this sound correct in my case, and how much am I looking at for to get this done? If it is expensive, would it be a better use of limited funds to have the whole heating/hot water system replaced by a combi boiler? Any help would be much appreciated!
I have another problem with bad smelling standing water near where the water drips out - onto decking so hard to investigate what is happening underneath. I'll save that for another thread though!
Cheers
Chuen
I hope someone can advise on a problem that we're having. And apologies in advance if I go into too much background details - not sure what will be useful.
Background
We moved into a new house this summer, which has what looks like a fairly old GlowWorm boiler downstairs, plus a hot water cylinder upstairs. It was the summer, so we never used the central heating, but the hot water worked fine and without incident.
We had plasterers in in the autumn, who took off the radiators without draining the system - I think they just tightened the nuts where the pipes joined the rads. They then came back to reconnect them, turned the heating on to check things worked, and found some rads weren't filling up much, so they went into the loft to poke around, but eventually decided the narrow pipework meant it would take a while for them all to fill.
The problem
The rads are now all working to some extent, but we now have a different problem, which I think coincides with the rads going back on/starting to use the heating. Water drips out from a pipe in the roof onto the garden after we use the shower, or the hot water. I took a look in the loft, and we have a big tank, and a small one, which i believe is the expansion tank from the boiler/hot water cylinder (?). The water is leaking from that smaller one. I noticed that the water level in the tank was about an inch below the overflow pipe, but after turning on the taps and shower it crept to above it without any water dripping in from the pipe that overhangs. It appears the water is coming in from the pipe at the bottom of the tank that I believe is supposed to feed into the hot water cylinder. The float didn't seem to move particularly freely, and sat low in the water, but I'm not sure if this is related. I bent it down a bit in any event.
I read in another thread on this forum something that sounded similar, where the advice from 'Bahco' was that it was caused by a split coil and a new cylinder was required. Does this sound correct in my case, and how much am I looking at for to get this done? If it is expensive, would it be a better use of limited funds to have the whole heating/hot water system replaced by a combi boiler? Any help would be much appreciated!
I have another problem with bad smelling standing water near where the water drips out - onto decking so hard to investigate what is happening underneath. I'll save that for another thread though!
Cheers
Chuen
