Hi All
Just wondered if anyone could tell me what a Power Flush of my central heating system involves. I've also heard of Power Cleanse, is this the same thing? How long does it take and will it be worth it?
Tom
The short answer is that it probably involves the transfer of a significant wodge of your money into the pocket of someone else. Powerflushing seems to be being sold by some operators as a miracle panacea which will improve just about everything to do with your heating system and probably your sex life and waistline too.
It is a specific solution to a specific problem - excessively sludged-up radiators and pipework. It is also advisable when replacing a boiler. If this situation has been clearly diagnosed by a heating engineer than it's probably what you need.
And the technical details are that one uses a machine which pumps the central heating water rapidly around the system, ideally with the water hot, and containing a cleaning liquid. The flow can be reversed, which one does periodically to try to get more sludge mobilised into suspension in the water. One goes around the system turning off all the radiators except one to concentrate the flow through each radiator in turn. One can tap the radiator being flushed with a rubber mallet to loosen sludge, or even use an attachment to a hammer-only SDS drill to vibrate the rad. If one tests the temperature across the area of the radiator (at least, the front panel on a double-panel rad) one can detect colder, sludged-up areas and attack them (from the outside) with one's hammer.
When all rads have been flushed the water is changed, to rinse out the dirty water with clean. The water should be dumped out rapidly to get the muck that's been stirred up out. On a flushing system with magnetic filters (some have, though I don't think any come with them as standard) most of solid particles of the sludge should be caught by the magnets and can be cleaned off as it builds up during the cleaning process. During the rinsing process the radiators should again be turned off so all the flow goes through one at a time, and the amount of dissolved solids in the water monitored with a TDS meter until it is within 10% of the amount in the clean water the system is being flushed with. As each radiator gets to this clean state it is isolated and rinsing proceeds to the next, until all are clean.
For a vented system the header tank has to be isolated during the flushing process and it should be cleaned - possibly removed to so so - before being put back into service.
Finally the system is dosed with corrosion inhibitor.
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