Let's have the bowdlerized as well as the unexpurgated versions!
Replacement radiator is colder at bottom than it is at top.
- Thread starter fluff29
- Start date
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Fluff, you have managed to stear the rudderless ship that is your heating system, over nine months. During this time, you have posted information that puts many so called heating engineers to shame. I will leave the pleasure of putting the cherry on the cake to you, so feel free to conclude this episode that has had more than 10,000 views..
Needless to say, this fault like any other, needed to be looked at on the understanding that system at one time worked perfectly well, did not need to be repiped like many posters suggested, nor did it need to be range rated as has been suggested. If anyone cares to look at the 19 pages at which the post stood yesterday, the answer or point of suspected problem was already established some time ago. What needed doing was get to site (for me 68 miles each leg) and eyeball the problem and fix it.
Needless to say, this fault like any other, needed to be looked at on the understanding that system at one time worked perfectly well, did not need to be repiped like many posters suggested, nor did it need to be range rated as has been suggested. If anyone cares to look at the 19 pages at which the post stood yesterday, the answer or point of suspected problem was already established some time ago. What needed doing was get to site (for me 68 miles each leg) and eyeball the problem and fix it.
Right boys, are you ready for the answer. 
Drum roll please.
The diverter valve was clogged up really badly with hard, black stuff!!! It was also around the pipes leading to the valve plus the DHW heat exchanger.
Dan did a great job of dismantling and cleaning the valve, cleaning all the other associated pipework, elbows, etc which also had a build up. Then he renewed all the worn gaskets.
When he reassembled, there was an immediate different in the time it took for all the rads to start heating up and also the return temperatures improved immensely. It did not however fix the problem rad completely.
Dan run the rad in 10mm copper pipe and tidied the manifold up for me. Also got him to do a few upgrades that I was after. Got 2 drain taps fitted incase we had needed to flush the system and I have a new swanky programmable room stat.
All rads were bouncing hot when Dan turned the system back on.
The house now gets so hot. The stat kicked in tonight to give a temperature of 21 degs. It only took 30 mins for the living room to reach temperature and the boiler to switch off. Felt the return pipe under the boiler and there is no heat there when I had never felt any before.
Dan - I won't need to do any repipe to the manifold upstairs. It is now too warm up there and I have had to turn all the TRV's back.
This is the heating system that I wanted and Dan has delivered it.
I must thank everyone who has tried to help me to sort the system. I have learnt an awful lot about how the system works now and we could very easily now remove a radiator from the wall when decorating (before I would just paper round best I could).
Special thanks must go to ChrisR, Agile, Tamz and D-Hailsam. You all stuck at this with me and helped me understand what was going on. Chris's drawings were second to none and your explanations were great.
The biggest thanks must go to Dan. Your dedication of explaining things over the forum and getting us to run tests were great. It was a great pleasure to have you in my house and to see a dedicated, problem solving tradesmen at work. I just hate to think what I would have ended up with if you hadn't came to my rescue. And to think, that you completed this transformation in a day. Dan - my husband would like to add that he would recommend you to anybody and they should book you today.
Thank you all very much for your time and effort and hopefully I won't be on here for a long time to ask questions about my heating system.
Fluff
Drum roll please.
The diverter valve was clogged up really badly with hard, black stuff!!! It was also around the pipes leading to the valve plus the DHW heat exchanger.
Dan did a great job of dismantling and cleaning the valve, cleaning all the other associated pipework, elbows, etc which also had a build up. Then he renewed all the worn gaskets.
When he reassembled, there was an immediate different in the time it took for all the rads to start heating up and also the return temperatures improved immensely. It did not however fix the problem rad completely.
Dan run the rad in 10mm copper pipe and tidied the manifold up for me. Also got him to do a few upgrades that I was after. Got 2 drain taps fitted incase we had needed to flush the system and I have a new swanky programmable room stat.
All rads were bouncing hot when Dan turned the system back on.
The house now gets so hot. The stat kicked in tonight to give a temperature of 21 degs. It only took 30 mins for the living room to reach temperature and the boiler to switch off. Felt the return pipe under the boiler and there is no heat there when I had never felt any before.
Dan - I won't need to do any repipe to the manifold upstairs. It is now too warm up there and I have had to turn all the TRV's back.
This is the heating system that I wanted and Dan has delivered it.
I must thank everyone who has tried to help me to sort the system. I have learnt an awful lot about how the system works now and we could very easily now remove a radiator from the wall when decorating (before I would just paper round best I could).
Special thanks must go to ChrisR, Agile, Tamz and D-Hailsam. You all stuck at this with me and helped me understand what was going on. Chris's drawings were second to none and your explanations were great.
The biggest thanks must go to Dan. Your dedication of explaining things over the forum and getting us to run tests were great. It was a great pleasure to have you in my house and to see a dedicated, problem solving tradesmen at work. I just hate to think what I would have ended up with if you hadn't came to my rescue. And to think, that you completed this transformation in a day. Dan - my husband would like to add that he would recommend you to anybody and they should book you today.
Thank you all very much for your time and effort and hopefully I won't be on here for a long time to ask questions about my heating system.
Fluff
So basically there was a blockage to the rad and a blockage in the, boiler ristricting the flow, jesus, 9 months, for something this simple, you should have got him out 9 month ago
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D
Deleted member 105431
20 pages of crap; thanks.
20 pages of crap; thanks.
yup and 20 mins of graft stood in front of it
goood shot dan
Congratulations to Danny for going all those extra miles ( 68 each way! ) to help these people who have been victims of the incompetents including even Vaillant staff engineer(s) whom I would have expected to have made a better effort to identify the fault.
This is another example of how a customer can call those who should know what to do and find that in fact they dont want to get down to properly diagnosing the fault.
Another satisfied customer!
Tony
This is another example of how a customer can call those who should know what to do and find that in fact they dont want to get down to properly diagnosing the fault.
Another satisfied customer!
Tony
Guys, look at page 1. Fluff posted flow and return temperatures at each rad. These are roughly balanced for 10 degree differential. Only thing I see at this point is low flow temperature. I cannot see how it can be assumed at this stage that there is a blockage in the system. Flow and return at the boiler is 14 degrees. This again, surely, does not raise any flags pointing to blockages or restrictions.
I do agree that those temperatures do not, in themselves, indicate any obvious problem.
However, we know that the heat output is limited and a low gas rate measured would imply that there is not enough flow through the boiler to take more power to the rads.
Of course we cannot expect an owner to do all the checks that an RGI would do. ( Or not in the case of the RGIs she already had although we dont expect Homeserve people will ever do much anyway. )
Then there is the non diagnostic route where rather than mane any measurements all the bits are inspected internally to look for something wrong.
A further clue there might be a blockage was when she did the bucket test at the problem rad and did get some pieces of debris out. So further debris stuck at restrictive parts of the boiler was a distinct possibility.
Tony
However, we know that the heat output is limited and a low gas rate measured would imply that there is not enough flow through the boiler to take more power to the rads.
Of course we cannot expect an owner to do all the checks that an RGI would do. ( Or not in the case of the RGIs she already had although we dont expect Homeserve people will ever do much anyway. )
Then there is the non diagnostic route where rather than mane any measurements all the bits are inspected internally to look for something wrong.
A further clue there might be a blockage was when she did the bucket test at the problem rad and did get some pieces of debris out. So further debris stuck at restrictive parts of the boiler was a distinct possibility.
Tony
just freakin once agile admit you where wrong jeez
wish i was always right
wish i was always right
Tony I would say Fluff is no blond bimbo. She has better understanding of her heating system than some plumber have of boilers they fit.
WRT your bucket test, you need to sit down and thinkit through as what you are advocating is as useful as a concrete lifebelt. Your bucket test needs to be polished a bit to make it useful.
How do you know the output is limited and not low due to low setting of boilerstat.
To be honest my first thought was it was a blockage, thats what i said months ago, doesnt matter about flow and return tems, you all went far to deep for such a simple fault IMHO, al rads work part from one, that used to work = more often than not blockage, i'm not being a charlie aftertimer it what i said dont know how many months ago, but nice one DP for finally sorting it, not your fault she ad a load of muppets round
The first posting, 20 pages ago, said that this was a new rad that had just been fitted as a replacement.
We first suggested it needed balancing. Then there were 19 more pages of discussion, questions and tests.
When Danny finally went and cleared the blockages in the boiler he still found the flow to that rad was inadequate and so repiped in larger tube which solved the flow to it.
There is only one way to solve a problem and thats at the scene.
Tony
Sorry Agile
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