Help With Bleeding a Radiator in a Loft Conversion - Advice Needed All aspects of plumbing questions and answers, help, tips and information

[Sue N]

Hi,

I'm having trouble bleeding my radiator in my loft conversion. I had the loft conversion around 4 years ago and this has a bathroom and bedroom up there. The bathroom rad does need bleeding as well as it is bubbling when turned on but the little flat head screw thing has one of the bits broken off, so i guess i need to get some sort of thin pliers to get a grip of this to turn it???

The bedroom rad i have opened with a flat head screwdriver and i could hear air coming out but no water came out. I have left it on for a good 5 minutes with no water. I closed it and turned all my heating back on but only the bottom was hot still. I closed all the thermostatic values on all the other rads in the house and tried it but still no water comes out.

I have spent all afternoon looking on the internet and forms for some advice and have read about pressure. I have a Worcester Greenstar RI wall hung gas fired condensing boiler (from front of manual) in the kitchen which was installed at the same time as the loft was completed. Also in a cupboard in the loft conversion i have a Oso Super S unvented hot water cylinder 120-300 litres (from front of manual).

I can't seem to see any pressure gauge or anyway of filling the system like my old combi boiler in my old house.

Any help with my problem would really be helpful guys.

Once i have bled the system i plan of attempting to balance the heating so that i get uniform heating throughout the house as at the moment it seems all over the place and the loft is very cold in the winter.

Sue.

[proptech]

Hi Sue

Before we go any further, there has to be a means of filling the system. I doubt it, but could it be possible that there's a small tank somewhere in the roof space. Although I would really expect to see a filling loop and gauge in the airing cupboard, or under the boiler.
As for the damaged radiator bleeds, What exactly has broken, Perhaps a photo would help.
You may wish to get some help on this, as it sounds like lot of water has been lost from the system since it was last used, and should be investigated.

[AnnieMcK]

Hi there!
I had a very similar problem about a month ago and I did some googling as I did not want to have to call out a plumber - they are so expensive so I was keeping that as a last resort!
I found these videos on YouTube by corgi homeplan and they have turned me into quite the DIY genius - but more importantly I was able to sort my radiator out on my own (no plumber needed) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq6Bl0ilLMc I thought I would share this on here and you could use it also! Hope this helps

[htg engineer]

You'll always get air at the highest point of a heating system, if it was a commercial installation it would have Automatic Airvents at this point, you need to find out how the system is filled, as you need to vent the radiator until water appears at the radiator vent - but if you do this without refilling you could end up with no heating at all.

Adding a good inhibitor will reduce the gas build up in the system too.