Really hoping someone could help please. Plenty of background info to start:
Two years ago, we bought the house we are in now. I noticed then the radiators all seemed to be making a whooshing noise, comparable to the sound you sometimes hear in the pipes when running say a cold water tap at full pelt.
From my limited knowledge and looking around on google, I noticed that when I turned the lock shield down on a particular radiator from fully open ( as they were when I'm moved in) to just a quarter turn open, it reduced the hissing/water velocity sound down to an acceptable level. Doing this seems to create an even louder pressure sound of the other radiators nearby, so I repeated the process all over the house and that seemed to do the trick, sort of!
The problem was still there if say, my little girls room (coldest room in house), was the only radiator demanding heat. From my limited knowledge, it seemed that because the other rads had reached temp, the pressure from the pump was still trying to squeeze pressure through my daughters radiator at a water velocity speed greater than necessary. Turning the lock shield down from a quarter to an eighth, reduced the hissing noise to an acceptable level, but by this point the radiator just isn't getting hot enough to warm the room efficiently. If I open the lock shield valve past a quarter turn or even fully open, we're back to that whooshing fairly loud noise. So I keep it to a quarter turn as a happy medium.
Moving on, the boiler is a 42cdi Worcester Bosch. We have 6 radiators downstairs and 6 upstairs.
Today I had the Worcester Bosch engineer out and to start with he was skeptical. He asked me to open all the valves fully with all rads on. Doing this seems to cure the problem, however once a few radiators switch themselves off because they've reached the desired temperature in that room, then the other radiators were giving out thus whooshing sound again. He admitted that it isn't right as it is.
Great to hear from someone else that it isn't all in your head!
The boiler we have has a self modulating pump. The engineer kindly offered to switch over to a replacement pump (inside warranty), just in case the pump wasn't correctly modulating, however this hasn't fixed the issue at all.
Other things I've done over these last two years is balance the rads, but that was just a waste of time because the noise was just increased again in rads demanding heat.
Also tried down rating the boiler with Bosch on other end of phone, they talked me through that one.
The main problem with having the lockshield down to a quarter turn is the heat output isn't always enough and I'm basically having to compromise by turning the boiler thermostat to the max level.
I'm definitely missing something here. I've put up with it for two years, if it can't be fixed them I'm just going to get someone to fit a completely different boiler and pray that is the cause.
Any suggestions please?
Two years ago, we bought the house we are in now. I noticed then the radiators all seemed to be making a whooshing noise, comparable to the sound you sometimes hear in the pipes when running say a cold water tap at full pelt.
From my limited knowledge and looking around on google, I noticed that when I turned the lock shield down on a particular radiator from fully open ( as they were when I'm moved in) to just a quarter turn open, it reduced the hissing/water velocity sound down to an acceptable level. Doing this seems to create an even louder pressure sound of the other radiators nearby, so I repeated the process all over the house and that seemed to do the trick, sort of!
The problem was still there if say, my little girls room (coldest room in house), was the only radiator demanding heat. From my limited knowledge, it seemed that because the other rads had reached temp, the pressure from the pump was still trying to squeeze pressure through my daughters radiator at a water velocity speed greater than necessary. Turning the lock shield down from a quarter to an eighth, reduced the hissing noise to an acceptable level, but by this point the radiator just isn't getting hot enough to warm the room efficiently. If I open the lock shield valve past a quarter turn or even fully open, we're back to that whooshing fairly loud noise. So I keep it to a quarter turn as a happy medium.
Moving on, the boiler is a 42cdi Worcester Bosch. We have 6 radiators downstairs and 6 upstairs.
Today I had the Worcester Bosch engineer out and to start with he was skeptical. He asked me to open all the valves fully with all rads on. Doing this seems to cure the problem, however once a few radiators switch themselves off because they've reached the desired temperature in that room, then the other radiators were giving out thus whooshing sound again. He admitted that it isn't right as it is.
Great to hear from someone else that it isn't all in your head!
The boiler we have has a self modulating pump. The engineer kindly offered to switch over to a replacement pump (inside warranty), just in case the pump wasn't correctly modulating, however this hasn't fixed the issue at all.
Other things I've done over these last two years is balance the rads, but that was just a waste of time because the noise was just increased again in rads demanding heat.
Also tried down rating the boiler with Bosch on other end of phone, they talked me through that one.
The main problem with having the lockshield down to a quarter turn is the heat output isn't always enough and I'm basically having to compromise by turning the boiler thermostat to the max level.
I'm definitely missing something here. I've put up with it for two years, if it can't be fixed them I'm just going to get someone to fit a completely different boiler and pray that is the cause.
Any suggestions please?