"Terry D" wrote in message
...
Thee_Psycho wrote:
"BillR" wrote in message
...
Thee_Psycho wrote:
We moved in to our new house in May, and have only just recently
turned the heating on. I have been downstairs to find it was
seriously cold. Closer inspection revealed that the radiator in the
living room needed bleeding,
the one in the hall is working but rusty!

Worse case is the one in our kitchen, it was stone cold, I tried
turning the valve at the end of the radiator to turn it up. Nothing
happened, it was
just turning round and round! I ended up taking th cover of and
getting an adjustabel spanner to it, i turned it and hot water
immedialty filled the
pipe, passed the valve then spurted out on to the floor! The joint
is leaking, I have tightened the valve back up bu its still
dripping!
Where is it leaking?
Is it where the valve connects to the feed pipe or where it connects
to the rad?
In either case you could try tightening the joint nut a little.
You should hold the body of the valve with another spanner/wrench to
stop it turning when you do this.

The big lesson here is to check out/maintain the CH in the summer
when its easier to fix.

Its leaking, at both ends now where the valve meets the radiator,
tried tightening th nut but will little luck. Yes I realise now I
should have checked the heating earlier, weird thing is when we
viewed the house all the radiators worked, I made a point of checking
them, and the survey didn;t flag anything dodgy up. Ho hum!

What you really need to do is to drain the whole system, then replace the
faulty valves and possibly also the rusty radiator. In order to ensure
against leaks, use PTFE tape around all threads Then flush the whole
system
with clean water followed by a flushing agent (eg Fernox) to clean out the
system (this may need to be left in for a few days - follow the
instructions
carefully). Then drain & flush the system again and refill, incuding a
good
anti-corrosion inhibitor (Fernox again?). The exercise is time consuming
because you have to bleed all radiators at every refill, but it's really
not
that difficult. Make sure that you have a separate header tank for the
heating system before attempting this. It's worth it in the end. BTW,
have
you considered a claim against the surveyor.

Terry D.

Tempting to moan at the Surveyor, but I didn;t go for a full survey as the
property was only 9 years old and is housing association property too, so
something I should have checked myself. Think its looking like I will have
to drain the whole system to replace the radiator and valve, but what is a
header tank? I have my boiler in the kitchen, a hot water tank in the airing
cupboard and a cold water tank in the loft. Or is my Cold water tank split
in to two, wither seperate feeds for the heating and ho****er. I haven't
paid much attention to it, since moving in. Sorry for the lack of detail!