C
countryman69
Around 20 years or so ago and shortly after Hep2o came on the market, I installed the central hetaing system in our house using a mixture of Hep2o plastic (no barrier available then) and copper. Although inhibitor was put in (and regularly refreshed) I'd not heard anything about haematite.
It's a big house and so some rooms have very little CH flow through them. Over the years I noticed a gradual falling off in efficiency with some rads not getting very warm. Investigating further I found at least one of the pipes blocked with this black gunge. Interestingly, the copper pipe that this plastic pipe was connected to was perfectly clear.
I put this down to haematite in the system but surprised that it deposited itself only in the plastic and not the copper.
I mentioned this today to the engineer who came to do the annual service on the oil boiler and his response was that the 'original Hep2o decomposed which was why they introduced barrier pipe'. Googling hasn't really come up with anything to back up his claim and so I thought I would ask the experts here.
Since discovering the blocked pipe in the picture, I've power-flushed the system and installed a Magnatite which does need an annual wipe down as there is a build-up of a slight film of haematite.
Supplementary question, if I may. I fitted Acova Striane radiators which have a very narrow internal bore. I recently took one of them off to do some replastering behind and thought I'd flush it out with the hose. I was surprised to find that it had sludged up a bit as forcing mains water through pushed out a fair bit of black and shaking the radiator from side-to-side seems to flush out even more. So I'm wondering whether I should take off all the radiators and repeat the same flushing.
Bit stumped really as to the best way forward.
Any advice gratefully received.
Thanks
It's a big house and so some rooms have very little CH flow through them. Over the years I noticed a gradual falling off in efficiency with some rads not getting very warm. Investigating further I found at least one of the pipes blocked with this black gunge. Interestingly, the copper pipe that this plastic pipe was connected to was perfectly clear.
I put this down to haematite in the system but surprised that it deposited itself only in the plastic and not the copper.
I mentioned this today to the engineer who came to do the annual service on the oil boiler and his response was that the 'original Hep2o decomposed which was why they introduced barrier pipe'. Googling hasn't really come up with anything to back up his claim and so I thought I would ask the experts here.
Since discovering the blocked pipe in the picture, I've power-flushed the system and installed a Magnatite which does need an annual wipe down as there is a build-up of a slight film of haematite.
Supplementary question, if I may. I fitted Acova Striane radiators which have a very narrow internal bore. I recently took one of them off to do some replastering behind and thought I'd flush it out with the hose. I was surprised to find that it had sludged up a bit as forcing mains water through pushed out a fair bit of black and shaking the radiator from side-to-side seems to flush out even more. So I'm wondering whether I should take off all the radiators and repeat the same flushing.
Bit stumped really as to the best way forward.
Any advice gratefully received.
Thanks