CONDENSING CENTRAL HEATING PROBLEM

tHE SYSTEM WAS NEWLY INSTALLED LAST YEAR AND WORKED A TREAT HOWEVER HAVING BEEN TURNED OFF OVER THE SUMMER IT IS NOW NOT FULLY WORKING. THE DOWNSTAIRS RADS ARE HOT BUT THE UPSTAIRS ONES ARE COLD. tHERE IS NO AIR IN THE RADS AS THEY HAVE BEEN BLED. I HAVE TRIED TURNING THE DOWNSTAIRS RADS OFF TO SEE IF THIS HELPED BUT IT DIDN'T. tHE PRESSURE IS OK AND ALL THE RAD TAPS ARE OPEN. THE SYSTEM IS A BIASI CONDENSING BOILER. ANY HELP GREATLY APPRECIATED.

So you accidentally hit the caps lock before you started typing. That's fair enough, we all do that sometimes. But you didn't stop once to look at your screen as you typed? Or maybe you did, and just couldn't be bothered to correct?

Don't SHOUT!

Probably the latter. However, if you do end up with a page full of upper case text and you have Word installed on your machine you can convert it to lower case quite easily.

Select the whole page and Cut to the Clipboard Paste into Word and Select the whole text again. Shift F3 and you'll cycle through All Caps, All Lower and First letter in each sentence capitalised.

It's a DIY solution.

Don't be an ARSE!

Even a really stupid person can see he hit the Caps Lock key accidentally, and any normal person would, having realised the mistake at the end of the paragraph, presumed no-one would be stupid enough to comment on the error!

I guess you were overlooked in the assumption.

Pete

Ok so far...

Weeeel, see, I think it's incredibly rude to send a message like that.

To me, what the author is saying is: "I made a mistake, typed it all in caps, but I'm such a lazy b@stard I really can't be bothered to redo it. Please spend ages trying to read it anyway, and post helpful replies to my question".

Others have whinged enough about the caps lock, you had better have taken the point...

Does this system have separate controls for the upstairs and downstairs? (control problem).

Is the system pressure OK? (see FAQ).

OK sorry about the caps lock, didn't mean to shout, point taken but I'm a novice at these things.

No the system does not have seperate controls but the rads have trv's (which have been turned up).

The system pressure is ok.

Obviously no one has closed the valves at the other end of the upstairs rads.

Are all the upstairs rad full

At this point it would be hard to make further suggestions without a lot more info.

If you want to pursue this at a diy level then the next thing to do is to make a good diagram of where all the pipes go.

The aim is to understand why radiators, under pressure and full of water, which are connected to a working heating system have no flow through them.

No the valves are open.

Yes. Water came out of the hole when bled All downstairs rads are hot. One rad upstairs is heating, the other 3 upstairs rads are cold. Sorry I am not very helpful.

Bob

Did you also turn up the valves on the other side of the rads to get them to heat up faster? My money is on the system needs balancing, if you shut down the valves downstairs does upstairs get warm?

Tried that and it didn't help. Take it I should have seen a difference quite quickly, left in like that for almost an hour, but then it was getting cold downstairs and her indoors complained.

Thanks Bob will give that a go.

yes you should!

Then its probably the pump as Bob says, especialy if the boiler is a combi. If its only a year old cant you get them back to fix this?

Yes I could, but wanted to make sure it wasn't something that I'd missed before calling them.

If it is the pump would it not effect all the radiators?

Some of the radiators might be being heated by convection. Pumps like valves often fail after lying inactive for several months of warm weather.

I suspect that the Trv's have been turned down whilst the system was hot and the valve seats have stuck. Remove the Trv heads and pull the pin up lightly with a pair of pliers. Legin

If it's the pump you would not get any of the downstairs rad heating at al and (depending on the model) probably no HW either.

Stuck TRVs looks like the best bet so far.