"Steve Wilson" wrote in message
om...
I've just drained my central heating system down and fitted a trendy
new designer radiator. It looks fantastic, but has left with me with
some practical problems - I can't bleed the air out of the upper floor
radiators and I have no hot water !
The radiator is one of the tall helical "Hot Springs" models, but is
the required 2 foot below the expansion tank, so that can't be the
issue.
I have 2 draincocks in the garage - the one that I used definitely
drained the radiators, but could it also have drained the hot water
cyclinder? There seems to be less water than these should be getting
to the pump (and slackening the bleed screw produces neither air nor
water. I can't find any means of bleeding air from the cyclinder.
I can't understand why the air won't bleed out of the upstairs
radiators. They seem to be partially filled, but don't seem to want
any more water (there is plenty in the expansion tank, I've checked).
Any suggestions gratefully and desperately received - the thought of
calling out the plumber to fix my DIY is too embarassing to
contemplate !
Thanks in advance,
Steve

Apart from the other excellent advice already posted:

I had a similar problem when I added another couple of radiators - when I
looked in the header tank it had a load of red 'algae' type stuff which had
beeen crusted around the sides and bottom of the tank, but had been stirred
up by the emptying and refilling.
This had blocked the downward feed to the system, giving the symptoms you
describe.

Fixed as follows:

(1) Tie up ballcock to prevent more water coming in
(2) Drain header tank into the bath using garden hose as syphon - the syphon
was primed from an upstairs tap (mains cold water) because I didn't fancy
sucking. This filled the bath with nasty red gunk but cleared out the tank.
You can untie the ballcock for a bit to help the flushing through.
(3) Removed the bottom feed from the header tank and fixed the end of the
garden hose to it secured with a jubilee clip.
(4) Connected other end of the hose pipe to mains cold water and slowly
turned on the tap. This pressuirised the system, and cleared the blockage.
Fortunately I have more than one hosepipe so I could flush the system
through by opening the drain cock downstairs and draining through another
hose pipe. Hopefully this removed most of the red gunk.
(5) Reconnect the pipe to the bottom of the header tank and fill as normal.

HTH
Dave R

P.S. an alternative emergency solution is to pressurise your system using
mains water (from a tap with a non-return valve) up through your garage
drain cock. This will allow you to fill the sytem but will not solve the
problem with the feed from your header tank.