DIY Doctor UK DIY Forums

Hi,
I am looking to move an upstairs radiator and so need to (partially at least to ground floor) drain the central heating system down. It's a system that heats up a combi tank (that also seems to double up as an electric immersion tank). The tank and boiler are both in the loft.

But I cannot find any drain off valve anywhere. And none of the radiators have drain valves either.

Does anyone have any tips on how to drain it down??

Thanks.

First make sure the water feeds are off and no more water can get into the system.

Close all the radiator valves, but remember to open them when you have a working drain off one.

There are few ways of doing this.

You can cut the pipe just below a radiator valve if the radiator valves are close and put on a Speedfit/Pushfit drain cock on the feed end. You will get some spillage but not much.

You can just freeze a pipe on the ground floor then cut it and add a drain point.

You can use self-cutting washing machine fitting on the ground floor. (There design to be use on 15mm copper pipe.)

Then just connect a garden hose and drain down that way.

Then when the system is empty just repair the damage pipe work and fit one of the ground floor radiators with a drain off lock shield.

There about £4 and I have found work better that freeze.

Thanks for your reply Peter. Unfortunately, your answer was too late as I needn't to do it last Fri.

In the end I turned off the water, then opened the bleed valves on the downstairs radiators and allowed the water to drain into buckets. Fortunately they were fairly new rads so i was able to turn the valves so they pointed directly down into the buckets, so there was hardly any spillage. I only needed the upstairs to drain enough to plumb in a bathroom towel rail rather than drain the whole system. So this did the trick. In future i think I'll get one of those self cutting taps.

Thanks for your help though.