Hi
My central heating developed a problem over the weekend (always happens on the coldest day of the year!) - I have been attempting to get hold of the engineer who installed it but no joy so far so thought I would seek advice on here..
Background.... I bought a 1920s house earlier in the year. Many of the radiators were in random places, pipe work shot to pieces (DIY bodge), and a horrendous DIY water cylinder with header tank in one of the bedrooms.
4 months ago I had all but two of the radiators replaced, new pipe work to the new locations, which linked into old pipework where this was reusable or where locations were not changing. A new (unvented I think?) water cylinder was installed downstairs, expansion vessel (red thing that says flexcon on the gauge) and some other stuff that I'm not entirely sure what it does. I retained the existing Worcester Danesmoor 15/19 conventional oil boiler which I was advised was working fine. I have a wireless Honeywell thermostat and all the radiators (apart from one) have TRVs.
System has a magna clean and was power flushed when installed so the water is fairly clean.
The heating was working very well for the first few months until yesterday...
All of the radiators downstairs were working fine, however only the bathroom radiator upstairs was working. The radiators in the 3 bedrooms were cold - there was hot water to the inlet pipes but not the radiators. I tried a few things...
I checked that the radiators didn't need bleeding. One of them downstairs did (which incidentally seems to need bleeding once a month?) All the others were fine (and when they do work they are hot all over).
I played around with the TRVs - closed and opened them in different configurations to see if that did anything... probably didn't..
I read on the internet that if I have an expansion vessel, the pressure could be low if upstairs radiators are cold. I recall when this was installed that the pressure was slightly over 1 bar - so I added some water to around 1.25 bar.
Still nothing...
Until this morning when the heating came back on - now 3 of the radiators upstairs are hot and one is luke warm.
Down stairs they were all hot initially then over time two of them appeared to cool down, whilst the others stayed hot.
So basically I seem to be playing roulette with the radiators at the moment. A few of them do appear to be hot regardless, but at least half can be hot one minute and cold the next.
Another issue I have noticed.... I have a Honeywell wireless thermostat. If I first set the heating to manual - say 22 degrees, it will switch on the boiler and heat up the radiators. As mentioned some radiators can get hot whilst others stay cold. Even if the thermostat is located in a room where the target temperature hasn't been reached - lets say 18 degrees, the boiler appears to switch off. Even increasing the target temperature to 24 or 25 degrees won't switch on the boiler.
I'm making a guess here could the setup has some sort of internal cut off at a certain temperature? but this isn't actually heating up all the radiators or rooms to that temperature. However I am clutching at straws......
Any ideas would be appreciated - I have a 15 month old son and have had to buy an electric radiator tonight to make sure his bedroom is warm in the meantime!
Thanks in advance
Robin
My central heating developed a problem over the weekend (always happens on the coldest day of the year!) - I have been attempting to get hold of the engineer who installed it but no joy so far so thought I would seek advice on here..
Background.... I bought a 1920s house earlier in the year. Many of the radiators were in random places, pipe work shot to pieces (DIY bodge), and a horrendous DIY water cylinder with header tank in one of the bedrooms.
4 months ago I had all but two of the radiators replaced, new pipe work to the new locations, which linked into old pipework where this was reusable or where locations were not changing. A new (unvented I think?) water cylinder was installed downstairs, expansion vessel (red thing that says flexcon on the gauge) and some other stuff that I'm not entirely sure what it does. I retained the existing Worcester Danesmoor 15/19 conventional oil boiler which I was advised was working fine. I have a wireless Honeywell thermostat and all the radiators (apart from one) have TRVs.
System has a magna clean and was power flushed when installed so the water is fairly clean.
The heating was working very well for the first few months until yesterday...
All of the radiators downstairs were working fine, however only the bathroom radiator upstairs was working. The radiators in the 3 bedrooms were cold - there was hot water to the inlet pipes but not the radiators. I tried a few things...
I checked that the radiators didn't need bleeding. One of them downstairs did (which incidentally seems to need bleeding once a month?) All the others were fine (and when they do work they are hot all over).
I played around with the TRVs - closed and opened them in different configurations to see if that did anything... probably didn't..
I read on the internet that if I have an expansion vessel, the pressure could be low if upstairs radiators are cold. I recall when this was installed that the pressure was slightly over 1 bar - so I added some water to around 1.25 bar.
Still nothing...
Until this morning when the heating came back on - now 3 of the radiators upstairs are hot and one is luke warm.
Down stairs they were all hot initially then over time two of them appeared to cool down, whilst the others stayed hot.
So basically I seem to be playing roulette with the radiators at the moment. A few of them do appear to be hot regardless, but at least half can be hot one minute and cold the next.
Another issue I have noticed.... I have a Honeywell wireless thermostat. If I first set the heating to manual - say 22 degrees, it will switch on the boiler and heat up the radiators. As mentioned some radiators can get hot whilst others stay cold. Even if the thermostat is located in a room where the target temperature hasn't been reached - lets say 18 degrees, the boiler appears to switch off. Even increasing the target temperature to 24 or 25 degrees won't switch on the boiler.
I'm making a guess here could the setup has some sort of internal cut off at a certain temperature? but this isn't actually heating up all the radiators or rooms to that temperature. However I am clutching at straws......
Any ideas would be appreciated - I have a 15 month old son and have had to buy an electric radiator tonight to make sure his bedroom is warm in the meantime!
Thanks in advance
Robin
