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Hi all,
We recently purchased a house and nothing seems to work correctly here, I've spent weeks rectifying issues. Plumbing, electrical, carpentry it's been never ending. The house was built by Barratt Homes in the year 2000, it is a 3 bedroom house called a Palmerston, the CH/HW system is a Y plan vented system with a Ideal Classic boiler. The house has 9 radiators, one of which is a large double, the rest are single and no heated towel rails, only the 3 bedroom radiators have TRV's the rest have lockshield valves on both sides. The Pipework to the radiators looks quite small, I will have to put a caliper on them but I'd say between 10-12mm?
Thankfully most issues have been rectified but I cannot get to the bottom of an issue we have having with our CH/HW system.
I'll try and write this post with everything chronologically and with as much information as possibly, apologies if this becomes a long first post.
The first day we got the keys I put the HW on so we could do a bit of cleaning here, strangely the whole house heated up at the same time, I found the programmer and it was definitely calling for HW only so I went to the airing cupboard and did some checks. I found the Mid position actuator wasn't working correctly. Being an electronics/electrical engineer by trade I thought I would take it apart and see if I could repair it.
Upon inspection the whole unit was burnt out inside, all the resistors were black and the circuit board was in a right state so I binned it and fitted a Drayton 27651SX actuator body.
I still had the same issue so I opened up the wiring centre and there had been some bodge work going on it there, numerous bits of wires jammed in different places. So I put all the wiring right and the actuator was working correctly, but the radiators were getting luke warm when only calling for CH, so a bit better but not fixed entirely. As I bought the complete Drayton actuator kit I fitted the valve body and all this issue was resolved.
At this point in time we only needed HW and given the issues with the system wiring I wanted to check the boiler over as there were numerous wires hanging down from it, as mentioned the boiler is a Ideal Classic manufactured approx 1999/2000, I have no idea what Kw it is as there are no labels left on it and it looks like the front door has never been fitted due to it's location in the cupboard. I checked the wiring over and it was all fine, I removed some auxiliary wires there that didn't go anywhere and it seems to work okay. I did notice that the limit thermostat/overheat was just hanging on by one thread on its nut so tightened that back up enough so it wasn't rattling around. The programmer was in a daft place in the kitchen and you could not see the LCD without a mirror so I fitted a Drayton Wiser system.
Everything was fine with the HW and then as it got a bit colder over the past few weeks we had the CH on and I noticed some issues, often we would hear a wooshing sound through the pump and boiler, it would setting down after a bit. I gave the radiators a quick bleed but didn't find any air in the system. The double radiator in the living room would only get hot at the top and the tall vertical "designer" radiator only ever heated up one one column.
START HERE IF YOU WANT TO GET TO THE MAIN ISSUE without backstory
When we decorated the kitchen I decided to take this "Designer" radiator off the wall to paint behind it, I thought I would give it a flush in the garden. It was absolutely FULL of magnetite, the water was black, I gave it a good clean with the hose and tapped the radiator all over with a rubber mallet until it ran clear, when I put it back on the wall it started working correctly.
Given all the magnetite in this radiator I had serious doubts to whether this system has any inhibitor and I had no idea how long ago it's been dosed with inhibitor or drained down for that matter.
I decided the best thing to do would be to put some cleaner in the system and then give it a good drain, refill it and do the same. I put some cleaner in there, I used Flomasta 0630, I left this in for about a week switched off the system, put the Mid position actuator in Mid position and drained the system, I then refilled the system and drained it again and there was lots of magnetite coming out. Not happy with this I went up and cleaned the F&E tank out turned the water back on, in turn I went around every radiator and "flushed" them through with the water going through the system from the F&E tank, gave each radiator a tap with a rubber mallet and could see the magnetite leaving each radiator. This all took a while but eventually the water was running clear.
I then allowed the system to fill back up and added a bottle of inhibitor, I went around and bled each radiator, opened the manual vent on the HW tank feed and everything was going well.
I got the system back on and everything was working much better I thought, the living room double radiator was now heating from top to bottom, but it took ages to heat up in comparison to the others. Before I drained the system I made a note of turns on the lockshield valves, apart from the radiators with TRV's they were all wide open. I did wind some back a bit to test if I could get a bit more flow to that radiator but it made little difference, I thought I'll leave that job till another day and measure the flow and return temps on each etc.
I still felt something wasn't right and it sounded like the boiler was cycling quite often, almost as if the hysteresis is wrong with the thermostat, it would light up heat up for a few seconds, then go back to off, then 30 seconds or less it would do the same thing. At first I thought there may be a thermocouple issue with it and was going to take the PCB out and check a few things over.
I went up to the airing cupboard to check a few things and looked at all the pipework and valves and noticed something I didn't pay any attention to, there was a gate valve lower down with a snapped off handle. I looked at the pipework and thought this is odd, it's redirecting the flow directly back to the boiler, I did some reading up and found out it is a manual bypass. I put an adjustable spanner on the square end and noticed it was fully open! This didn't seem right so did some more reading, I read it's not really needed on a Y plan system with a Mid position valve and only 3 radiators out of the 9 here have TRV's. I do plan on adding some Drayton Wiser TRV's to all/most of the radiators at some point in the future however.
With the bypass gate valve closed the system was working WAY better, radiators getting up to heat quickly, including the living room radiator, I was really happy with this as I have a feeling it was costing us more in gas with the bypass fully open? And the boiler seemed to cycle a lot less.
But this is where the problems start and I can't quite pinpoint what's changed, ever since I did the above the system is really noisy, it sounds like the radiators are full of air, lots of sloshing sounds etc. It's driving the other half mad. I don't know if the bypass being open previously masked this issue, or all that sludge/magnetite was masking it.
I had a look at the circulator pump, which WAS a Wilo Gold 50, it was set to Speed 3. I thought I'd try some slower settings, so I tried 1 and 2 but maybe it helped a little but the issue was still there. Unfortunately for me the speed switch stopped working, it became intermittent after I had tried a couple of speeds. I removed the pump and saw it was date stamped 1999, so not a bad run! If I could remove the speed switch off the module I'd have a go at fixing it.
I went out and bought a Wilo Pico Yonos 25/1-5 and fitted it, hoping it may even solve the problem, it didn't and I still have this issue.
I started reading further and read about hydrogen in the system etc, so I thought I'd give it another good flush again. I didn't fancy doing the trick with a lighter I'd read places and I could never really get any air out of the radiators anyway. I did manage to get a puff of air out of the manual vent valve on the HW tank, which I put in a small clear plastic bag and sniffed it, but I could not smell anything.
I went and bought some more inhibitor and drained it all down again, the water was surprisingly clear this time. I did the same trick as before and then filled the system up and flushed each radiator, it all looked nice and clean. Before I refilled the system I replaced the HW circuit manual vent valve with an automatic bottle vent, I also replaced the bypass gate vale with a new one as it was a bit of a mess and had a missing handle.
I still have the same issue and I'm absolutely baffled, air is getting in to the system somewhere and I feel it's either through the vent pipe on the H&E tank or it's hydrogen (don't seem to get much air in the radiators though)
I've made a short video where I've gone up to the H&E tank, got my other half the turn the CH on and off and select different pump speeds. I've got a jug of water with the vent pipe going on and when the pump is powered up and down it seems to suck and blow air in to the jug. It's difficult to say at this stage whether I'm getting pump over in to the H&E tank, I've left the float valve up so the tank can't refill and the jug with water in it under the vent pipe to see whether the jug fills/empties with water over the next few days or if the H&E tank empties.
I've checked the Vent/Feed pipes going up to the tank and there seems to be no blockage, if I drain the system and leave the water flowing in to the tank it seems to go though the system quite well and never fills up. I have also tried strong magnets around the pipework and none of it is the slightest bit magnetic.
I've got the pump set to speed 1 at the moment as if I turn it up at all it just makes matters worse it seems, I've tried the settings on the pump like the VP and Constant modes but they make no difference.
A couple of things of note here if it helps, I am not sure at this stage whether it is worse when the radiators are hot and the boiler is up to temp, I will have to test this by running the system for a while with the boiler off. I have a feeling it's worse when it's hotter but without jumping the gun about hydrogen, that could be due to the room stat cycling causing the pump to go on and off, or air behaves differently when it's warm?
Also when I drain the system down, I try to pick the lowest radiator downstairs but they won't all drain together, I have to drain each one, I'm not sure if I'm draining them wrong and tried different combinations of opening the bleed valves but it makes no difference, I've had to empty each one downstairs individually.
I have put a K type thermocouple on the boiler flow/return, I get a delta of around 10c, with the boiler stat set between 4 - 5 it heats up to 62-72c, I try and keep it above 60c.
I'm at the end of my tether with this and I really need to get to the bottom of it, the noise is horrendous it's annoying and worrying at the same time, we can hear it throughout the whole house, every radiator and all the pipework, it sounds like loud water sloshing around.
Apologies for the essay, I really need to get to the bottom of it somehow, any advice whatsoever would be gratefully appreciated and I can try out any further tests.
Pictures attached of system and pipework and link to F&E video here:
Many Thanks
Dale
We recently purchased a house and nothing seems to work correctly here, I've spent weeks rectifying issues. Plumbing, electrical, carpentry it's been never ending. The house was built by Barratt Homes in the year 2000, it is a 3 bedroom house called a Palmerston, the CH/HW system is a Y plan vented system with a Ideal Classic boiler. The house has 9 radiators, one of which is a large double, the rest are single and no heated towel rails, only the 3 bedroom radiators have TRV's the rest have lockshield valves on both sides. The Pipework to the radiators looks quite small, I will have to put a caliper on them but I'd say between 10-12mm?
Thankfully most issues have been rectified but I cannot get to the bottom of an issue we have having with our CH/HW system.
I'll try and write this post with everything chronologically and with as much information as possibly, apologies if this becomes a long first post.
The first day we got the keys I put the HW on so we could do a bit of cleaning here, strangely the whole house heated up at the same time, I found the programmer and it was definitely calling for HW only so I went to the airing cupboard and did some checks. I found the Mid position actuator wasn't working correctly. Being an electronics/electrical engineer by trade I thought I would take it apart and see if I could repair it.
Upon inspection the whole unit was burnt out inside, all the resistors were black and the circuit board was in a right state so I binned it and fitted a Drayton 27651SX actuator body.
I still had the same issue so I opened up the wiring centre and there had been some bodge work going on it there, numerous bits of wires jammed in different places. So I put all the wiring right and the actuator was working correctly, but the radiators were getting luke warm when only calling for CH, so a bit better but not fixed entirely. As I bought the complete Drayton actuator kit I fitted the valve body and all this issue was resolved.
At this point in time we only needed HW and given the issues with the system wiring I wanted to check the boiler over as there were numerous wires hanging down from it, as mentioned the boiler is a Ideal Classic manufactured approx 1999/2000, I have no idea what Kw it is as there are no labels left on it and it looks like the front door has never been fitted due to it's location in the cupboard. I checked the wiring over and it was all fine, I removed some auxiliary wires there that didn't go anywhere and it seems to work okay. I did notice that the limit thermostat/overheat was just hanging on by one thread on its nut so tightened that back up enough so it wasn't rattling around. The programmer was in a daft place in the kitchen and you could not see the LCD without a mirror so I fitted a Drayton Wiser system.
Everything was fine with the HW and then as it got a bit colder over the past few weeks we had the CH on and I noticed some issues, often we would hear a wooshing sound through the pump and boiler, it would setting down after a bit. I gave the radiators a quick bleed but didn't find any air in the system. The double radiator in the living room would only get hot at the top and the tall vertical "designer" radiator only ever heated up one one column.
START HERE IF YOU WANT TO GET TO THE MAIN ISSUE without backstory
When we decorated the kitchen I decided to take this "Designer" radiator off the wall to paint behind it, I thought I would give it a flush in the garden. It was absolutely FULL of magnetite, the water was black, I gave it a good clean with the hose and tapped the radiator all over with a rubber mallet until it ran clear, when I put it back on the wall it started working correctly.
Given all the magnetite in this radiator I had serious doubts to whether this system has any inhibitor and I had no idea how long ago it's been dosed with inhibitor or drained down for that matter.
I decided the best thing to do would be to put some cleaner in the system and then give it a good drain, refill it and do the same. I put some cleaner in there, I used Flomasta 0630, I left this in for about a week switched off the system, put the Mid position actuator in Mid position and drained the system, I then refilled the system and drained it again and there was lots of magnetite coming out. Not happy with this I went up and cleaned the F&E tank out turned the water back on, in turn I went around every radiator and "flushed" them through with the water going through the system from the F&E tank, gave each radiator a tap with a rubber mallet and could see the magnetite leaving each radiator. This all took a while but eventually the water was running clear.
I then allowed the system to fill back up and added a bottle of inhibitor, I went around and bled each radiator, opened the manual vent on the HW tank feed and everything was going well.
I got the system back on and everything was working much better I thought, the living room double radiator was now heating from top to bottom, but it took ages to heat up in comparison to the others. Before I drained the system I made a note of turns on the lockshield valves, apart from the radiators with TRV's they were all wide open. I did wind some back a bit to test if I could get a bit more flow to that radiator but it made little difference, I thought I'll leave that job till another day and measure the flow and return temps on each etc.
I still felt something wasn't right and it sounded like the boiler was cycling quite often, almost as if the hysteresis is wrong with the thermostat, it would light up heat up for a few seconds, then go back to off, then 30 seconds or less it would do the same thing. At first I thought there may be a thermocouple issue with it and was going to take the PCB out and check a few things over.
I went up to the airing cupboard to check a few things and looked at all the pipework and valves and noticed something I didn't pay any attention to, there was a gate valve lower down with a snapped off handle. I looked at the pipework and thought this is odd, it's redirecting the flow directly back to the boiler, I did some reading up and found out it is a manual bypass. I put an adjustable spanner on the square end and noticed it was fully open! This didn't seem right so did some more reading, I read it's not really needed on a Y plan system with a Mid position valve and only 3 radiators out of the 9 here have TRV's. I do plan on adding some Drayton Wiser TRV's to all/most of the radiators at some point in the future however.
With the bypass gate valve closed the system was working WAY better, radiators getting up to heat quickly, including the living room radiator, I was really happy with this as I have a feeling it was costing us more in gas with the bypass fully open? And the boiler seemed to cycle a lot less.
But this is where the problems start and I can't quite pinpoint what's changed, ever since I did the above the system is really noisy, it sounds like the radiators are full of air, lots of sloshing sounds etc. It's driving the other half mad. I don't know if the bypass being open previously masked this issue, or all that sludge/magnetite was masking it.
I had a look at the circulator pump, which WAS a Wilo Gold 50, it was set to Speed 3. I thought I'd try some slower settings, so I tried 1 and 2 but maybe it helped a little but the issue was still there. Unfortunately for me the speed switch stopped working, it became intermittent after I had tried a couple of speeds. I removed the pump and saw it was date stamped 1999, so not a bad run! If I could remove the speed switch off the module I'd have a go at fixing it.
I went out and bought a Wilo Pico Yonos 25/1-5 and fitted it, hoping it may even solve the problem, it didn't and I still have this issue.
I started reading further and read about hydrogen in the system etc, so I thought I'd give it another good flush again. I didn't fancy doing the trick with a lighter I'd read places and I could never really get any air out of the radiators anyway. I did manage to get a puff of air out of the manual vent valve on the HW tank, which I put in a small clear plastic bag and sniffed it, but I could not smell anything.
I went and bought some more inhibitor and drained it all down again, the water was surprisingly clear this time. I did the same trick as before and then filled the system up and flushed each radiator, it all looked nice and clean. Before I refilled the system I replaced the HW circuit manual vent valve with an automatic bottle vent, I also replaced the bypass gate vale with a new one as it was a bit of a mess and had a missing handle.
I still have the same issue and I'm absolutely baffled, air is getting in to the system somewhere and I feel it's either through the vent pipe on the H&E tank or it's hydrogen (don't seem to get much air in the radiators though)
I've made a short video where I've gone up to the H&E tank, got my other half the turn the CH on and off and select different pump speeds. I've got a jug of water with the vent pipe going on and when the pump is powered up and down it seems to suck and blow air in to the jug. It's difficult to say at this stage whether I'm getting pump over in to the H&E tank, I've left the float valve up so the tank can't refill and the jug with water in it under the vent pipe to see whether the jug fills/empties with water over the next few days or if the H&E tank empties.
I've checked the Vent/Feed pipes going up to the tank and there seems to be no blockage, if I drain the system and leave the water flowing in to the tank it seems to go though the system quite well and never fills up. I have also tried strong magnets around the pipework and none of it is the slightest bit magnetic.
I've got the pump set to speed 1 at the moment as if I turn it up at all it just makes matters worse it seems, I've tried the settings on the pump like the VP and Constant modes but they make no difference.
A couple of things of note here if it helps, I am not sure at this stage whether it is worse when the radiators are hot and the boiler is up to temp, I will have to test this by running the system for a while with the boiler off. I have a feeling it's worse when it's hotter but without jumping the gun about hydrogen, that could be due to the room stat cycling causing the pump to go on and off, or air behaves differently when it's warm?
Also when I drain the system down, I try to pick the lowest radiator downstairs but they won't all drain together, I have to drain each one, I'm not sure if I'm draining them wrong and tried different combinations of opening the bleed valves but it makes no difference, I've had to empty each one downstairs individually.
I have put a K type thermocouple on the boiler flow/return, I get a delta of around 10c, with the boiler stat set between 4 - 5 it heats up to 62-72c, I try and keep it above 60c.
I'm at the end of my tether with this and I really need to get to the bottom of it, the noise is horrendous it's annoying and worrying at the same time, we can hear it throughout the whole house, every radiator and all the pipework, it sounds like loud water sloshing around.
Apologies for the essay, I really need to get to the bottom of it somehow, any advice whatsoever would be gratefully appreciated and I can try out any further tests.
Pictures attached of system and pipework and link to F&E video here:
Many Thanks
Dale
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