DIY Doctor UK DIY Forums

I am a complete novice and have limited DIY skills. I am struggling to resolve a problem we are experiencing at our home with our central heating.

We have an old central heating system (not combi) in our terraced house. Despite its age, it always worked fine in the last fourteen years we have lived in the house. Recently, we were doing some work (platering the walls and painting) and the builder removed one of the radiators in the entrance hall to get access. He put it back after he finished but the central heating stopped working (but there was no problem with the hot water). Initially he blamed it on the old system but when I pointed out to him that it was fine before - he went around and checked all the radiators (removed the air). He got it to work the central heating downstairs but the upstairs ones were only working partially (2 working fine as normal, 1 working partially (hot at the bottom half), 1 didn't work at all). He assured me that soon they will all start to function as normal. However, the opposite has happened. One by one, the upstairs ones have stopped working. Now we only have the three radiators working downstairs. I have also noticed that there seem to be a lot of gurgling sounds as soon as I turn on the system. It looks like the radiators upstairs have no water in them.

I am considering calling the BG Homecare people but they want £192. Also reading from the other posts here, I have a feeling that they may try to sell me a new bolier which I cannot afford at the moment.

Could someone give me some pointers please on the actions I should take? I do not want to be without heating during Christmas. I have a five year old child.

Thanks in advance for your help.

When the plastering work was done and the radiators removed air would have entered the sytem, if air becomes trapped - especially on older systems it can be awkward to remove and the system wont work correctly.

With you saying the radiators were only hot at the bottom, this indicates there's air in the radiators, and they need bleeding.

Try belleding all radiators and pump - if accessible, make sure all radiator valves are open. If still no luck try turning off the downstairs radiators and see if upstairs will push through.

Thanks htgengineer for your prompt response. I have tried bleeding the non working radiators, but no luck I'm afraid. In any case, when I tried bleeding the system, some air came out but no water. I could hear some water movement inside the radiators though. I have tried bleeding them both with and without the CH is on.

On reading some other posts, I think it could be something to do with the expansion tank valve. What do you think?

Many thanks.

Joel

If there's no water coming out when you bleed the radiators, there's either an airlock or the cold water supply that fills the heating system is blocked.

have you tried turning pump speed up ?
turning off downstairs radiators ?
you could - if easy to do, turn the pump around - this should clear the airlock.