DIY Doctor UK DIY Forums

my boiler cycles on and off every 30secs on hot water and central heating, had british gas out to look at it and they reckon its because the system is blocked with iron oxide in the pipes, causing a restriction in flow.

He recomended a £600 ish clean of the system with a presure tool.

i was thinking about trying to flush the system myself and use the adey magnaclean filter, which has a magnet in it to collect the iron oxide.

any thoughts, or should i just pay for british gas to do it properly?

Hiya mate,

£600 is expensive, call around and you'll get it flushed for half that price i'd imagine.

But I wouldn't bother, use this instead:

Sentinel X400 Sludge Remover

Pour it into one of your rads, leave it in for about a week, making sure you get the system nice and hot once a day then flush it out yourself by draining down your system at the end of the week.

When you refill the system put some Sentinel X100 Inhibitor in and you should find you'll be ok:

Altogether I reckon you can do this job yourself and save about £560 on what BG has quoted.

AH.

cheers that sounds good advice, i'll give it a go, do you think its worth fitting the adey magnaclean filter to the system to help clean it out.
found one for £100.

Those Magnaclean things look pretty good, I've seen one working in demonstrations at the plumbers merchants but I'm not sure if it would solve the clogging by itself if the sludge is as you described, they are more of a preventative measure rather than a reactive measure if you know what i mean.

It wouldn't do you any harm to fit one though I suppose, all my peers seem to be fitting them with new system installs.

AH.

sentinel x400 is weak stuff, it's no where near as strong as chemicals used in a proper powerflush. those chemicals have to be flushed out and neutralised within hours, leave them in for a week and you'll have a sprinkler system installed in your house.

as previously said a magnaclean will help take some dirt out of the system but only if it's moving around, your problem sounds like it's not moving around. x400 may make a tiny difference if at all but as i said before it's pretty weak stuff, all it does is suspend some dirt for up to 3 weeks until it's flushed out. it will only shift the dirt that's barely stuck there.

the trouble with a lot of powerflushes is people haven't got a clue what they're doing, they buy a powerflush machine and think they're the daddy. you'd be amazed at the amount of jobs i've gone too when they had it flushed and the person that did it told them they had a faulty room stat etc when it was air locked or the system is still filthy as they only used something like x400.

so putting x400, draining then adding x100 will save you £560 but it'll also do pretty much nothing for a system that stays on 30 secs. plus if you've got a tank in your loft the cold feed might even be blocked so it may not even refill.