Radiators on ground floor stone cold

[jackofall]

Hi,

We have a issue with our heating, where the radiators upstairs are roasting hot, yet the radiators downstairs are stone cold .

We had a powerflush done the other day which didn't help ...Two radiators out of four (including lock shields and TRV's) on the ground floor where changed, but none of this helped. The engineer also used chemical over a few days and no improvement.

A new boiler was fitted feb this year (Vaillant ECOTEC pro 28 combi boiler) as the ground floor radiators at the time were not very hot We hope this would fix the issue.

Today I followed a guide from youtuber plumberparts on how to clear an air lock. We performed this on all radiators on the ground floor. There was a gurgling noise when opening the TRV and the flow 15mm pipe was getting warm. I also purged the return side and replaced the bleed nut. On doing that we flow pipe became stone cold again! I also tried balancing the radiators, by leaving the upstairs rads open a quarter of a turn on the lock shield side.

We discovered that one of the pipes located under the boiler is hot at the top of the Tee and cold at the bottom of the tee (see photo). I believe this pipe is the return.

So far we have spent quite a bit of money on this and really would appreciate some help to get to the root cause of the problem and what remediation works are likely required to great the ground floor hot.

thanks

 

[Deleted member 120897]

Sounds like a balancing issue or mixed up/crossed flow and return pipes.

 

[ShaunCorbs]

Have they ever worked eg before anything was done ?

 

[SimonG]

Have you turned off all the upstairs radiators? Do the downstairs radiators get warm if you do?

 

[Ric2013]

If the plumber carrying out the powerflush was able to force water through those radiators then they won't be blocked and what you have is a balancing issue or airlock. The fact that the radiator will fill from both sides is a good sign. Depending on the valves, 1/4 turn from closed could be the point at which the valve actually begins to do anything interesting. I have found on some systems I have to close a valve almost entirely to get the right balance.

Start by following Simon G's advice and then report back to us.

 

[hoylez]

Turn off all roads upstairs and all but one downstairs and the 1 rad should get hot then 1 by 1 turn the downstairs roads on when all got turn upstairs on
It will just be an airlock