Just moved house and trying to figure out the central heating --- house
was empty for 9 months before we bought and previous owner never lived
here so no instructions for anything.

We have two boilers, a Chaffoteaux & Maury Britony II T (in the
kitchen) and an Ideal E Type CF (opposite side of the wall in the
understairs cupboard), along with a timer/controller alongside the
first but apparently controlling the second.

There's a pic of 'em he

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b104/mkpb/boilers.jpg

(As you can see, the guy at Ideal who christened it the "E-type"
clearly had a sense of humour.)

So far it seems the Chaffoteaux acts as just an instantaneous gas water
heater and works entirely independently of the timer/controller, and
the CH is provided by the "E-type" --- although strangely, the DHW
seems hotter when the central heating is on.

The "E-type" is the sort of boiler I associate with cylinders and
header tanks but we don't have either. I also can't find a filling
loop which I thought might be there if the boiler was acting as a
"combi".

Could anyone hazard a guess as to how this system is likely set up and
how the two boilers interact if at all?

We also have an upstairs rad that's cold at the bottom and hot at the
top (is it sludged up?) and a downstairs rad that's hot at the very
bottom but cold everywhere else. I tried bleeding it but it made no
difference - in fact it seemed like it was sucking air in rather than
forcing it out. Any ideas what's going on?

Thanks for any advice.