solid fuel, gravity feed system please help

[wrightk]

im hoping someone can diagnose our heating system!

we have a solid fuel stove which does the heating and hot water. The way it is plumbed from what i can see downstairs radiators are ran via a pump, and upstairs are done by gravity. Downstairs work fine (there are only two rads on the pump). Upstairs is a different matter. There are 4 rads upstairs, only 2 work, the bathroom and a bedroom which seem to be connected to each other as they are backed against each other on the same wall. The other two come on only sometimes and when they do are not very warm at all.

Ive checked im burning correctly and at the right temperature.I have all the stats on the pipes set correctly i just cannot understand why they arent working. Ive bled them all, ive opened all the valves up and im out of ideas!

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Thanks

 

[onecog]

FOUR rads on gravity is a lot to ask.
I have one towel rail on my gravity system.Turn them all off bar one and see if it gets hot then do ths same with all the others.That way you can eliminate any other problem.

 

[wrightk]

thankyou. I have turned the two rads upstairs off that currently work. immediately the other two that dont usually are getting hot now.

Is there any way this situation could be resolved properly? It seems silly to me to have gravity on upstairs when there are two pumped radiators downstairs which could easily act as heat sinks when the upstairs could be pumped? or would this be a complete repipe

 

[onecog]

You could try balancing the upstairs rads but you would be better off hooking 2 or 3 of them up to the pumped system.
It's not a big job.