Central Heating Cleaner

[DerbyBorn]

I had some work done on my heating system - to fit a new radiator as part of an extension. Unfortunately I was out when the plumber finished his work and I cannot be sure he added corrosion protection. Ideally I would like to clean the system as I have one sluggish radiator and I suspect the manifold may be a bit sludged. Is there a cleaner that I do not have to neutralise?

Ideally I would like to add something that will soften any deposits and act as an inhibitor.

Happy to drain off a bit of water from each radiator to get rid of debris but don't really want to embark on major flushing and filling with the added cost of cleaner - neutraliser - inhibitor.

System 28 years old (always dosed) Boiler 3 years old.

[charles]

I don't believe you will clean the system without flushing it entirely. You can't "drain off a bit of water from each radiator" without undoing the valve and puting a container underneath. You'll probably end up with sludge on the floor. If the manifold is sludged, then how do you drain that out?

New inhibitor only costs about £15 from Sctrewfix.

[DerbyBorn]

charles wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Not concerned about cost of inhibitor - but it is the cost of cleaner, neutraliser and then inhibitor that all adds up. I suppose I need to bite the bullet - what is the recommended chemicals?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

If it has always had the correct inhibitor used, there shouldn't be any cleaning needed. That's really the whole point of it.

[Bob Minchin]

I fitted a new boiler recently. the old one had been in for 35 years or so at least. I added furnox f3 in the early spring and ran the old boiler for a few months before draining. I was somewhat disappointed that the drained water was virtually clear especially when I took every radiator off and hose flushed it and got huge amounts of black crap out. as well as the new boiler, I fitted a magnetic filter and ran the pump

24/7 without the boiler firing and each day for a week, I removed the filter and cleaned out yet more crap until the last clean produced very little additional dirt. I discussed this with the gas safe chap who came to commission the new boiler and he said that cleaners fell into two categories. The first type is designed to loosen the crap mainly prior to power flushing. The second type are designed to put the crap into suspension so that a fill and drain would bring out some of the crap but not necessarily all the accumulated sediment. He said that F3 is one of the former types. In your case I would attempt to find one of the latter types to get the most from draining down. An ideal approach might be to use F3 first to loosen stuff, then one of the other types and to fit a magnetic filter. I used a BoilerMag - available from toolsatan 76760 and would recommend it from both an ease of installation and effectiveness point of view. You can also get an adaptor to fit on instead of the filter unit to attach a power flusher.

[John Rumm]

I have used cleaners that don't require neutralising - i.e. you add them to the charge water and circulate for a few hours (or even up to two weeks). Then you flush the system to remove them.

[chris French]

Yup, I have been doing some modifications to our system. There are no particular symptoms of any problems with the system, but it is old so I took the opportunity to give a bit of a clean. I've put in some some sentinel x400 cleaner and will run that for a couple of weeks, then drain down again and refill adding inhibitor.

X400 doesn't require any neutralising.

[DerbyBorn]

Thanks.

[John Rumm]

Yup, I have used that in the past. Last time I did it, I used Fernox F3 IIRC (the X100 for inhibitor)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

But had there been inhibitor in use since it was originally commissioned?

I changed my boiler a few years ago - the original being some 30 years old. Always with inhibitor. The new boiler fitting instructions were very definite about cleaning/flushing so I did - but it all came out virtually clear. At the same time I moved a rad - and that one had very little black water in it even when upended.

It's probably the same as a car cooling system. In the old days when you used plain water in the summer, it would come out very rusty at a change. These days of decent additives, it comes out the same colour as it went in

- near enough.

[DerbyBorn]

DerbyBorn wrote in news:XnsA24CE5EEF25B8johnplant90ntlworldc@81.171.92.236:

Running X800 now.