No hot water from the tank.

[NewsGroups]

Hi

Have a problem with a hot water suppy. The system is a seperate CH and HW which was installed by the council some years back (property was ex-council and was purchased from the council by the previous occupiers). Every now and again, the hot water stops coming out of the taps. Now I've done alittle research on google and found one solution is to connect a pipe between the hot and cold taps, turn on the cold tap then turn on the hot tap (to force air out of the system), which does work, but i've got a feeling that it isn't an air-lock that is causing the problem.

Can anyone shed some light in what may be happening?

Steve

[BigWallop]

The supply to the hot water tank could be blocked or restricted. The outlet pipework from the hot water tank could be blocked or restricted. The expansion pipe from the hot water tank could be blocked or restricted.

It might be possible for you to be able to blow hard down these pipe systems to see if it creates bubbling noises inside the hot water tank.

[NewsGroups]

Thanks BigWallop

That did cross my mind, but didn't follow it up. May have to spend thr weekend blowing the pipes to see if there is a blockage/restriction.

S

[Brian S Gray]

When this happened in this house, a foreign body had passed out of the uncovered cold water tank in the loft and blocked the stopvalve in the feed to the hot water tank. In our case, the foreign body was a very dead young bat!. To remedy the situation, I drained the cold water tank (via bath tap after tying up the ball valve on the cold water feed to the cold water tank), and then removed the moving parts (spindle etc) from the blocked stopvalve, and sucked out the obstruction using a wet and dry vacuum cleaner. After reassembly and refilling the system, I also put a cover over the cold water tank to avoid a repetition of the problem. I might add that I should have acted sooner as I had already removed one or two dead adult bats from the header tank but had not thought through what might happen. I will not make that mistake again.

[IMM]

Best to fit a by-law kit as well. This has a screen on the overflow too, so no crawies get in. It is best to have a tank with a close fitting dedicated lid. If you don't have one, fit one, or fit a heat bank and get rid of open vented tanks.