Radiator Problems
If you have a problem with one or more radiators in your home there are some investigative actions you take before calling in assistance from your home emergency plan company, or telephoning the local emergency plumber if you have not taken out a plan in advance.
The actions that you take will depend upon whether the is one or there are several radiators effected.
Radiators are cool in one area of the home
If your central heating system is divided into several heating areas one of these could have a problem which would then
impact several radiators. The heating zones are often used to set different temperatures in one area of your home from those in another area.
If this is the case the first cause could be that the zone is set to ‘off’ or that you have a heating timer on this area and it has not yet switched ‘on’ that heating zone. Timers are electrical mechanical items and can be faulty or have a discharged battery or broken fuse.
An alternative cause of this problem is that the heating zone valve is faulty or locked into the off position. This is a more complex task and will require a plumber to be brought in to drain the system and replace the valve.
One radiator is cold
If you check and your other radiators are functioning correctly then this suggests that the problem is with this one radiator only.
You should check whether any of the radiator valves are switched off
- Is the radiator valve open or has it been closed. You can test this by moving the valve in an anti clockwise manner to open it
- Is the lockshield valve closed. Less likely but this is the valve on the other end of the radiator and it may have been closed if some work was done on the radiator. Again try to open it and see if the water flow commences.
- Is the thermostatic radiator valve (TRV) set at a low temperature. If the valve temperature has been set low then the valve will switch off the radiator at a normal room temperature. To set move the temperature to a high setting.
- Some of the valves are blocked. Scale in your system may have blocked the valves. Cleansing the system may clear this otherwise a plumber will need to clean or replace the valve.
Part of a radiator is cold
If the top is cold the radiator may need bleeding which is a task that the competent DIY person can complete.
If the bottom is cold then the radiator may have a build up of scale in the bottom preventing water flow. You will need to descale the radiator and there are chemicals you can buy to do this.
The center of the radiator is cold. This again could be caused by radiator scale and the radiator will need to be flushed with a power flush.
All radiators are cold
If you look at your boiler and it appears to be working this problem would suggest that the available hot water is not reaching the radiators.
The first culprit could be that the central heating pump is faulty. Alternatively the system thermostat or the room thermostat could be at fault. This will require a plumber or heating engineer to assist you.
You may be lucky that the cause is your central heating timer. Have the clocks moved forward or backwards and perhaps you have not adjusted the timer, or you did adjust it but by the wrong amount. Check that the timer has triggered the heating.
Banging noises from a radiator or from several radiators
There could be several reasons why there is banging (possibly coming from the boiler).
- The boiler thermostat may be set high or be faulty creating a high hot water temperature. This can be tested by turning down the boiler thermostat (not the room thermostat).
- Lack of water pressure in the heating system. This can happen if the mains supply has stopped or the expansion tank has run dry with a cistern valve which has seized closed. Look at the pressure valve on the boiler if you have one, is this within the recommended settings for your boiler? If you try to investigate the problem and cure it yourself you should first switch off the heating and then test the components listed above
- Scale in the radiators. Build up of contaminants and scale can cause hot water to release any gases it is containing as the gases crystallise on any impurities, as bubbles form on the glass imperfections in a bottle of fizzy drink.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.