- Messages
- 5,433
Drained down a 8 rad system with a combi upstairs in shower room and - apart from 1 small rad in same room - rest are downstairs. However I was told before starting that 1 never works at all because they think it was disconnected and one always struggles to get warm.
I was draining to add a rad couple metres along from one in kitchen.
Pipework routes are a bit of a mystery as house is very big but most rooms don't have any rads/CH at all and are rented out as flats with elec heaters. The rads served by combi are spread throughout the ground floor and all feeds disappear into walls.
Given this (and the fact a few of them didn't drain at all when I drained from one point near where I was adding a rad) I presume there are hidden drops and maybe some other weird routes. The house has been extended and extended repeatedly.
On refilling the flow and return to boiler upstairs got red hot, 3 rads downstairs got red hot but on 2 others (the new one i added and the one it was tee'd off from) got hot flows to rads but returns barely tepid. One further rad in a bedroom had a less hot - but 'getting there' flow and same problem with cold return.
So thought air or blockage on part of a return route shared by a few rads, although it was hard to work out why rads nowhere near each other were suffering but ones in between were fine but as I said, hard to know what routes were going on with pipework.
Did a bit of mucking about with turning off valves to working rads and waiting (no joy) and then drained off some water from troubled rads while re-filling trying to jig it about but no success. Left them to leave it running for a day to see if it sorts itself out but I'm guessing it won't.
So presuming I'm going back, what should I do? I was thinking drain down and refill again and if no joy I could maybe fill system from bottom up with a hose on a drain off?
As you can probably tell I don't do many jobs like this so not many tricks of the trade do I have...
Thanks for any tips.
I was draining to add a rad couple metres along from one in kitchen.
Pipework routes are a bit of a mystery as house is very big but most rooms don't have any rads/CH at all and are rented out as flats with elec heaters. The rads served by combi are spread throughout the ground floor and all feeds disappear into walls.
Given this (and the fact a few of them didn't drain at all when I drained from one point near where I was adding a rad) I presume there are hidden drops and maybe some other weird routes. The house has been extended and extended repeatedly.
On refilling the flow and return to boiler upstairs got red hot, 3 rads downstairs got red hot but on 2 others (the new one i added and the one it was tee'd off from) got hot flows to rads but returns barely tepid. One further rad in a bedroom had a less hot - but 'getting there' flow and same problem with cold return.
So thought air or blockage on part of a return route shared by a few rads, although it was hard to work out why rads nowhere near each other were suffering but ones in between were fine but as I said, hard to know what routes were going on with pipework.
Did a bit of mucking about with turning off valves to working rads and waiting (no joy) and then drained off some water from troubled rads while re-filling trying to jig it about but no success. Left them to leave it running for a day to see if it sorts itself out but I'm guessing it won't.
So presuming I'm going back, what should I do? I was thinking drain down and refill again and if no joy I could maybe fill system from bottom up with a hose on a drain off?
As you can probably tell I don't do many jobs like this so not many tricks of the trade do I have...
Thanks for any tips.
Last edited: