Plumbing - blocked pipe?

[blackbird]

Goes to show how little I know about boilers.

[TIGHTCHOKE]

2 minutes ago, blackbird said:

Goes to show how little I know about boilers.

Ditchman knows a couple!

[JohnfromUK]

4 minutes ago, blackbird said:

Goes to show how little I know about boilers.

I knew very little ......... but before having a major house re-work about 4 years ago I did a lot of research (books and on line).  If you have a fairly big listed building, the scope for insulation and the cost to heat are going to be major factors - so having a good flexible system that could be powerful enough to heat the property fully when needed, but reasonably economical when much of the house is 'dormant' was important to me.  It needed thought and care at the design stage.  I had a clean sheet of paper and worked it all through - so many systems suffer from having been altered and extended many times, and you get problems like pipes that are too small to carry the volume of water needed when more rads are added as an afterthought etc.

I have a large spreadsheet with each room analysed (wall types, windows, wall, floor ceiling and window areas etc.) to ascertain the 'heat requirement' to keep each room at the desired temperature when it was cold outside.  From that you can decide how many radiators (some of my large rooms have 4 doubles) you need to supply that heat requirement - and how they will be located in that room (i.e. avoid outside walls in favour of inside where possible etc.)

Once you have all the radiators, you can add the total heat that the radiators will give together - and that has to be what the boiler supplies (with an extra allowance for hot water).

It was a lot of work ........ but I'm pleased with the end result - which works well and uses about the volume of gas predicted.  I would love to have been able to have classic cast iron style radiators ......... but it was just too expensive, and they do end up very large compared to a modern 'double convector' for the same heat output.

[oscarsdad]

All sorted, thanks for all suggestions chaps. Only today got around to turning all the other rads off and boosting heating, kitchen radiator got hot so assume pushed through whatever bubble was the problem. Now just got to work out which rads were on which trv level so house isn’t too hot in some rooms. 

Edited January 16, 2021 by oscarsdad

[TIGHTCHOKE]

6 minutes ago, oscarsdad said:

All sorted, thanks for all suggestions chaps. Only today got around to turning all the other rads off and boosting heating, kitchen radiator got hot so assume pushed through whatever bubble was the problem. Now just got to work out which rads were on which trv level so house isn’t too hot in some rooms. 

Set them all to No 3 and then work from there!

[figgy]

Turn them down to frost in the rooms you don't use, no point heating them for nothing.

 

[oscarsdad]

4 minutes ago, figgy said:

Turn them down to frost in the rooms you don't use, no point heating them for nothing.

 

Exactly...I’m tight and already going to be having an argument with British Gas next week....apparently my direct debit is going to “increase slightly” due to increased usage - by slight they mean double. Of course we use more in the winter! But what they’ll do is double it, then leave it doubled all summer then owe me £300 when I switch provider...so I’ll be cancelling DD and then just pay for actual usage each month.