Calling all the plumbing heads....

My radiators stopped working a few week ago, well about 3-4 week ago.
Got a plumber out charged £30 to push the pressure up / fill water in the system, no idea if this is the technical term, basically in and out in about 5 minutes.

Same happened yesterday. Me and Nat were out at work all day and when we got in house was freezing.

Checked the bar pressure thing in the airing cupboard and it was at 0 bar. I've not got a clue about boilers so rang plumber man up.

He told me what to do to get it working again.

What I did was...

Theres a red small tank above the boiler, this is for the heating / radiator bit. I opened two tap things like the ones under the sink, I heard some water moving then the bar pressure thing went up to about 1.4. I shut the taps then cranked the heating up... NOTHING.

So did procedure again, this time with heating control thing turned off but I pressed the reset button on the boiler (in the garage). Then turned the thermostat up. That worked and we had hot radiators for a few hours.

Woke up this morning cold again, did the procedure a little bit, could feel radiators getting a bit hot so set off for work.

We have the plumber coming back on saturday to service the boiler / tank and generally check everything out for us.

But anyone know what it could be? Or if I've been doing things wrong.

Like I said I'm a right boiler pleb I no nowt abart em.

This is what it looks like, the two tap things:

Is a potterton boiler

Are you sure you're not losing coolant?
Check the long pipes that run under the floor from the boiler to the radiator

I'm hoping not that or all our laminate might have to come up, the pipes run from the garage, under the floor then god knows where...

Might be a house insurance jobby if somethings majorly up. Just decorated too...

Grrrr

I'm thinking a leak, Radiators are a closed loop so once you've brought the pressure up , for the pressure to drop the water must be going somewhere, if it was coming back through the tap you turned i'd expect your bar to be at local mains pressure rather than zero, Zero would indicate a loss radiator loop side

Will be visiting one of my customers today who do boilers and stuff i'll ask them

in all seriousness im with psymon, its got to be going somewhere.
there's other things that will stop the boiler cutting in; but the fact youre losing pressure means it's going somewhere.. :nonod:

We had a similar thing last year with our boiler. It was the pressure vessel inside the boiler, which had lost its pressure. They put in a new pressure vessel and pumped it up, hey presto it worked, and not that expensive either.

easy enough to re-pressurise the system , mine looses down to about 1 bar fro 2.5 over around 6 months , it is all old though about 12 years , but with the extension going up most of the pipes are going to be rerouted, and a new boiler going in in the next 2 years,to loose it over such a short a time does say something is leaking, check all radiators at both valves and all the pipework you can see

See if halfords can do a home visit.

I've heard their the experts at sorting coolant losses! :coat:

As an amateur plumbing expert I can confirm you have a water leak somewhere, the pressure should stay pretty constant and only require topping up a couple of times a year. :yesnod:
Finding the leak is the problem.
Check under the boiler for water and then check each end of each radiator. If you find a wet patch, check all the fittings above. Hopefully it will just be a rad valve fitting that needs nipped up.

Have you buying burgers from McDonalds again? :nonod:
Your house has HGF! :omg:
This time stay away from bloody Halfords! :bust:

Our boiler had a pressure release valve, check that is working, when we had our problem, it would keep pushing water out of there.

David Aiketgate wrote: ...Finding the leak is the problem.
Check under the boiler for water and then check each end of each radiator. If you find a wet patch, check all the fittings above. Hopefully it will just be a rad valve fitting that needs nipped up.

Top Tip for checking for leaks is to use tissue paper / loo roll as it shows up any moisture really clearly as a wet spot.