On Sat, 31 May 2008 10:12:07 +0100, Andy Hall
wrote:

On 2008-05-31 09:04:47 +0100, Mark said:

Thanks again Andy for your advice. I have only taken one radiator off
so far and there was only a small amount of sludge, most of the water
was clear. I was tending towards the power flush option because some
of the rooms have nice carpets and SWMBO would have a fit if anything
got spilled on them.

Oh sure....

You can protect for this quite well with some care. I used two (new)
cat litter trays from the supermarket, one under each radiator tail.
This gives plenty of catch capacity. A thick PVC sheet went down first
followed by absorbent paper and I had some disposable mop-up towel and
a bucket on hand.

I turned off the radiator valves and then carefully undid one union
part way. Then opening the bleed valve allows the water out in a
controlled way. Finally Undo the other union and carefully tip the
radiator towards one end to drain most of the rest. Take small
sandwich bags and fit them over the tails on the radiators securing
with a thick rubber band. You are now safe to remove radiator to
outside.

I wonder if I could just use the filling loop without removing all the
radiators?

You need to use it anyway. I thought about doing this to flush the
radiators at each radiator position. The trouble is that you would
need to flush a fair bit through the radiator itself to clear the
debris. I found that with taking them outside, I could flush much
more effectively.

If you meant using the mains pressure to flush via one radiator at a
time to a drain cock, that might work, but I don't think as effective.
Also, you would probably need to fit isolating valves to the boiler to
make sure that you can't either have a short path to drain through it
or that you flush debris through it from the radiators.

That was the kind of thing I was thinking about. However I'm not sure
I could easily fit isolating values. There is only one place I can
get to the pipes without ripping up floors etc and the pipes are
_very_ close together. I doubt I could squeeze anything in let alone
cut the pipes.

While you're at it, fitting a strainer with stainless steel mesh on the
return to the boiler is a good idea.

As above - not sure how I could achieve this.

You could find out the make and model available from HSS and contact
the manufacturer for detailed instructions if you choose that approach.

There only seems to be HSS logos on the instructions.

That's a pain. I wonder if there's anywhere else that rents them out.

I'll need to do this anyway. HSS have closed my local branch (even
though it's still listed).