S
splobber
We've recently moved to a new house and the previous owners don't appear to have looked after it, so we had a flush and a Magnaclean fitted. We still have a problem whereas air keeps getting sucked in and making a right racket, primarily around the boiler as we can hear a rush of water when the boiler fires and then sloshing a la a garden water feature from the magnaclean which is cut into the return pipe just above it. We believe air probably getting in through the vent pipe in the loft as it keeps spitting out water when the boiler stops firing and drawing air back in the process.
Numerous Homecare calls from British Gas offer differing solutions, but one bloke who came detected metallic sludge in the air separator which is partially blocking it and said the vent pipe should be raised in height to stop it pumping over back into the header tank. A search on the internet suggests this could well be the cause as the rads are all air free.
Anyway, a local plumber who has done a couple of jobs already said that he thinks a sealed system is better as it will cure the problem, although also said that chopping out the air separator, raising the vent pipe higher in the loft and then reconfiguring the pipework where the air separator once was should also work, so can stick with the current open vent type we have now.
We also have a problem where the house has gone through a garage conversion to a study/dining room as well as having an additional bathroom added, which has added another two radiators. Despite having a flush and with balancing the rads, the heat struggles to get to the bottom of the large downstairs radiators unless we shut off the upstairs ones. The plumber says that due to only having one drop from the pipework in the airing cupboard and then that being extended into the new conversion has weakened it. He says that apart from adding a couple of extra drops, doing the pipework to sort of the air issue and then converting to a sealed system will give a better chance of the heat getting to the downstairs rads.
Long story short - and apart from the obvious one of ensuring the vessel is kept topped up, is there any real pros or cons of switching from an open vented system to a sealed one? Will it give us some more heat downstairs as the system is put under a little more pressure to push the water round? I'm presuming our boiler is OK to switch to a sealed system (it's a Potterton Promax SL condensing one)?
Numerous Homecare calls from British Gas offer differing solutions, but one bloke who came detected metallic sludge in the air separator which is partially blocking it and said the vent pipe should be raised in height to stop it pumping over back into the header tank. A search on the internet suggests this could well be the cause as the rads are all air free.
Anyway, a local plumber who has done a couple of jobs already said that he thinks a sealed system is better as it will cure the problem, although also said that chopping out the air separator, raising the vent pipe higher in the loft and then reconfiguring the pipework where the air separator once was should also work, so can stick with the current open vent type we have now.
We also have a problem where the house has gone through a garage conversion to a study/dining room as well as having an additional bathroom added, which has added another two radiators. Despite having a flush and with balancing the rads, the heat struggles to get to the bottom of the large downstairs radiators unless we shut off the upstairs ones. The plumber says that due to only having one drop from the pipework in the airing cupboard and then that being extended into the new conversion has weakened it. He says that apart from adding a couple of extra drops, doing the pipework to sort of the air issue and then converting to a sealed system will give a better chance of the heat getting to the downstairs rads.
Long story short - and apart from the obvious one of ensuring the vessel is kept topped up, is there any real pros or cons of switching from an open vented system to a sealed one? Will it give us some more heat downstairs as the system is put under a little more pressure to push the water round? I'm presuming our boiler is OK to switch to a sealed system (it's a Potterton Promax SL condensing one)?
