Desludging old central heating

Aug 26, 2008 1 Replies

Thought I had posted this yesterday, but it doesn't seem to have appeared.



I am replacing radiators, adding thermostatic valves, and have installed a Magnaclean unit on my 40 year old central heating (boiler only 5 years old).



There is a lot of sludge. Obviously removing the old radiators is removing a lot, but I wanted advice about the easiest and/or most effective way of clearing the sludge - what products people would recommend etc. One suggestion has been to do a d-i-y power flush by shutting off all the radiators bar one and running the system so the Magnaclean cleans that section, then repeating the same with every other radiator individually. But what would be the best product to add - is Sentinel X800 worth the extra for example compared with Sentinel X400. Or are the Fernox products better. And will the sludge removers clear flux residues etc. from the work I have been doing.



Any thoughts?



TIA



Keith



I found Fernox DS40 to be good stuff.

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's billed as being particularly aggressive, to the extent that you shouldn't use it on elderly systems in case it eats its way through the essential metalwork and makes it leak. I needed two applications to the system I used it on. The first batch produced loud bubbling and a lot of gas (needing a lot of rad venting) as it dissolved the crap.

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