Heating Problem

iregk

Looked around the boards and couldn't find anything that accurately describes my problem.

I have a new house that I moved into in march and the heating system have never been right. It doesn't get as warm as it should and the house always feels cold. I didn't think a lot of it as the house wasn't fully furnished until recently but I only noticed how bad it was when in a neighbours house.
Its a gas heating system with an Ariston boiler and termostat controlled rads. I put the boiler all the way to max (turning the stop screw to do so) and also put the termo to 35.

The problem is that you could have the heating on for hours and the rads would only ever get warm! I have bled all of them but there are no differences in heat from one part of the rad to another, so heat throughout the rad is consistent (at least!). The sitting room rad is a big double and only ever gets midly warm. I noticed how bad it was when at my next door neighbours party at the weekend and his termo was at 25 and his sitting room rad nearly burnt the arm off me. It was piping hot!

The valves on all rads are also wide open all the way so has anyone got any ideas what could be causing this? Is there a valve or something else that I'm missing somewhere in the system? Its a standard new house gas setup (i think) boiler in the kitchen etc...

Thanks
Graham

beldin

Does the boiler stay on constantly or is it cutting out quickly
If it is staying on constantly the heat has to go somewhere.
Hvae you tried opening the second valve on the radiators to see if they are closed too much. Each radiator has 2 valves , a flow and a return.
The flow valve is usually the one you can turn off and on while the return is usually set a t a certain value to balance the system
Only one valve cover can turn these valves so try and open the return valve say 1 turn and see does that increase the temperatue on the radiator.
If that works then try it for the rest of the radiators , you may have to balance the system afterwards but there are other posts on that.

JamesM

Is the top outlet water pipe really close to the boiler getting very hot ? If not then the boiler is not reaching its temperature. If it is getting hot, then the circulation might be dodgy. Are the valves at the water pump fully open? There are up to 3 speeds on the water pump, is it at the max speed?
Just some more suggestions.
Jim.

iregk

Cheers lads for the help. Just one or two questions and please bear with me I know next to nothing about these things. Give me a server with unix and tell me there are problems and I will fix it but this no!

Anyway, james, where would the valves for the water pump be situated and how would i tell if they are fully open or not? I'm assuming if they turn anit clockwise they are not fully open? Speeds of the water pump, again how do i tell what speed its at and how can i change it if its at a low speed?

Beldin the boiler is on constantly so no cut off. Didn't know there was two valves on the rads so will look at those later. When you say balance the system out i take it you mean for flow of water around the system?

JamesM

iregk wrote:

Anyway, james, where would the valves for the water pump be situated and how would i tell if they are fully open or not? I'm assuming if they turn anit clockwise they are not fully open? Speeds of the water pump, again how do i tell what speed its at and how can i change it if its at a low speed?

Beldin the boiler is on constantly so no cut off. Didn't know there was two valves on the rads so will look at those later. When you say balance the system out i take it you mean for flow of water around the system?

I am not great on gas systems, but the basics are the same
The water pump is a unit usually close to the boiler. There are valves on either side of it. Should be fully anticlockwise. Sometimes these valves are very small and may be turned with a screwdriver. You turn the slot in line with the pipe for "open". On the waterpump there is a plastic cover over the wiring. On it, or close to it there may be a switch of some kind for the speed. There may also be a lever on the back of the pump, which can be swivelled around to fully open.
When you say that the boiler is always on, do you mean that it is firing - a full flame - all the time ? When you switch on the heating, the boiler should fire for a certain time - maybe 15 or 20 mins - reach the set temp, then go off. From then on, it will run for a few mins - go off for another few mins - on again etc., maintaining the set temp. It should not run continuously, especially if you are not getting heat to the rads. The boiler may not be actually firing properly. Back to earlier question - is the pipe exiting the top of the boiler hot - so hot you can't touch it ?
Jim.

iregk

Sorry i think i mis understood the comment earlier. Its firing as in it seems to follow the normal run of events that my mothers did. It comes on fires then will clock in as you say in about 15mins or so. Come back on and so forth...

I will check all the other stuff later on when i get home.

JamesM

iregk wrote:

Sorry i think i mis understood the comment earlier. Its firing as in it seems to follow the normal run of events that my mothers did. It comes on fires then will clock in as you say in about 15mins or so. Come back on and so forth...

I will check all the other stuff later on when i get home.

The boiler thermostat may be faulty and shutting off when the temp is still quite low. Checking that water pipe I mentioned will give you an idea if that is happening.
Jim

charlesanto

New house, presumably semi-d.
Should have 2 thermostats one upstairs one downstairs and should heat water in the immersion too. Each of these three are controlled by a seperate thermostat & valve. If nothing ever gets hot you'd have to suspect the boiler.

iregk

Thanks for all the help everyone. To answer some questions, the emersion is a summer boiler, i.e. heated by the gas. The controller on teh wall has two options, summer/winter, where you can heat the water independantly of the rads. This I believe is an electronic valve that turns off the rads/water?

So talking with a neighbour I believe its a closed system (what ever that means) and i altered the valves on both ends of the rads, this made the slightest of differences.

An addition I should say is that the water coming out of the taps and shower is piping hot, the pipes at teh top of the boiler are piping so the heat is doing the biz to some extent id say so still looks like something is not right. All red twist valves in the hotpress are all the way open. I have put up two pictures of the boiler to see if anyone has any info about the bottom valves, are any of these not right?

Also lads, the rads after adjusting seem to be quite hot now at the top and only warmish at the bottom. Again all rads are bled so no air.

Dilbert75

If its a closed system, there should be a pressure gauge somewhere near the boiler and it should, I believe, be somewhere around the 0.5 bar mark when cold. It may be that your system is not full, though in my own limited experience, one rad suffers first, gets cold at the top and can't be bled. Need to find the fill valve (like a washing machine valve in our case), probably in the hot press and refill / pressurise the system to that magic 0.5 bar.

JamesM

iregk wrote:

Also lads, the rads after adjusting seem to be quite hot now at the top and only warmish at the bottom. Again all rads are bled so no air.

It really seems like a circulation problem. If the water was circulating at a proper speed, the heat would spread down through the rads. Problem with pump or maybe motorised valve not opening fully.
Jim.

iregk

Thanks for all the help people.

got it sorted last night, had the site forman down he hadn't a clue said to get a plumber in. As it happens we had a plumber down anyway putting in a filter on the water and he had a look. A valve in the hotpress wide open he said he shoudl only be half way or so. Due to it being open the tank is taking most of the heat. Turned that to half way and the bloody heat in the house last night was like a sauna.

All rads working perfectly now and the house is lovely even after moving the thermo back to 25 and the boiler back to 3.