Primatic Cylinder - no hot water

[rogersmithref]

My father has an oil fired AGA cooker that heats his hot water, there is no central heating in his house.
It connects to a primatic hot water cylinder fed from a single header tank. The cylinder has a cold feed from the header tank, a feed to 3 hot taps from the top of the tank and a feed in and out of the tank to and from the AGA.
The AGA is on the same level as the hot water cylinder on the ground floor.
I have a drain tap at the bottom of the AGA and a drain on the incoming cold water supply to the tank. There is a drain point on the upper pipe (hot) from the AGA to to tank but this probably has not been opened for 50 years.
The tank is 4 metres away from the AGA on the same level with a very slight upward slope on the pipes

The original primatic started leaking inside causing brown water we have replaced that with an identical new Albion cylinder. The old system has run for 30 years with no problems.

Having installed the new Cylinder and filled it slowly (5 hours) with the hot taps open to form the bubble the hot water is not heating properly.
The pipes in and out of the AGA are very hot but they are lukewarm/ cold where they go in and out of the cylinder.

From the forum I think its an airlock, I have tried turning all of the hot taps on at the same time but this does not fix the problem.
Any advice will be greatly appreciated as the system has worked well for so many years my father did not want to change anything.

Thanks for looking
Roger Chippenham Wiltshire

 

[Centralheatking]

Hi Roger - I agree it is most probably an air lock but we will need to get some more info

1- Is the AGA gas/oil or coal/wood ? quite important here - if its solid fuel then the moderators
will move you
2- Friday is a good night to post and there will be loads of help soon as we all get back
3- We also have one of us very near you

Post answer to 1st question plse ----------- Centralheatking
oh by the way - 1st post hiya - and you have chosen a source of high quality info

 

[Centralheatking]

Ok - got it - Oil so Croppie will not move you - Helpsy lives near you AND IS A SOUND ENGINEER
- lets see what happens - going shopping with shwmbo - CHK

 

[lame plumber]

drain it down and refill again as fast as it will let you, and if you can fill via a drain off cock to force air up out of the pipework, ashouldnt affect the formation of the airbubble inside.

 

[Dotty]

Ok - got it - Oil so Croppie will not move you - CHK

Wanna bet? :smilewinkgrin:

 

[Nostrum]

It will probably be the cylinder coil that is air locked, crack the top nut off the coil and bleed out as much as you can from there. Get a load of towels and what not around as you may have to let a fair bit of water out with it.

 

[Centralheatking]

I would go for the water drain off - at the lowest place in your dads system
(MT Mtcock) it has a square head on it -

1. Attach a hose from an outside tap and shoot it up the system with mains water pressure

Normally this gets rid of air locks -

from a very packed xmas shopping place full of loons on my ipod 3 tning which is too small
for my eyes abd fingers CHK

 

[Ermintrude]

It will probably be the cylinder coil that is air locked, crack the top nut off the coil and bleed out as much as you can from there. Get a load of towels and what not around as you may have to let a fair bit of water out with it.

Water will be hot hot hot

 

[Nostrum]

Unless you turn if off off off!

 

[Ermintrude]

My soild fuel Rayburn didn't have an off switch must be on the posh aga units

 

[Nostrum]

This ones oil and the off button is not loading it up with any more fuel Dopey

 

[WHPES]

Primatic cylinders = abomination and work of the devil :devil2: