R
Riverside
Hello All,
After the great help I got here with my last plumbing mystery, i return with another.
My wifes uncle just had a massive leak due to the big freeze which has brought down his ceilings, he called his plumber "Dave" who charged him €200 for two straight unions and a three feet of qualplex and said he'd be back.
"Dave" is a busy man fixing all the leaks after the cold weather and put them on the long finger after telling them the boiler header tank in the attic would need to be replaced.
After "Daves" fix the central heating stopped working and "Dave" returned and said it was just air in the pump and to bleed at the pump.
This wasnt working so they asked me to have a gander....thats where the fun started.
House was replumbed about 10 years ago by a handy man plumber using iron pipe and some things about it confuse me.
The main lines run through the attics and down into the rooms.
The boiler is an oil fired floor model placed in the kitchen.
The rads are mish mash of pressed steel doubles and cast iron.
1: He had a vent/overflow pipe on both flow and return lines from boiler. Is this normal?
2: He had no safety by pass valves in case of all rads been closed, the hot wtr cly v/vs are allways open so it acts to allways allow flow i think?
3: The feed water line was angled down from the tank down to the main boiler riser, about a third of the way down it was tee'd and from here the overflow vent went back up very high above the header tank and came back down and dangled into the tank.
4: The main return line was tee'd as it left the attic and huge overflow vent pipe ran up the ceiling to dangle back down into the header tank.
I investigated the attic and their hot water tank was rotted badly and had blocked the feed to the boiler line.
So what I did was:
1. I replaced and replumbed the tank.
2. I followed his design of boiler feed and tee'd the overflow as indicated in the below pic.
3. I replaced the return line overflow/vent pipe with an auto air bottle vent.
4. I added another auto air bottle vent onto the return line from the hot water cly.
The boiler now works, it is heating water and most of the rads and cly are heating well but the rads at the back of the house are still cold, after bleeding and balancing most of the other rads I cant get the RADS E16, E17, E18 to warm up at all.
The main feed line to these rads is about 30 ft long from just above boiler to where the lines enter the back rooms ceilings I can get hot water about 10 ft down this line but now further.
These rads have never heated that well say the owner but I have bled them and they are full of water.
Whats my next step?
After the great help I got here with my last plumbing mystery, i return with another.
My wifes uncle just had a massive leak due to the big freeze which has brought down his ceilings, he called his plumber "Dave" who charged him €200 for two straight unions and a three feet of qualplex and said he'd be back.
"Dave" is a busy man fixing all the leaks after the cold weather and put them on the long finger after telling them the boiler header tank in the attic would need to be replaced.
After "Daves" fix the central heating stopped working and "Dave" returned and said it was just air in the pump and to bleed at the pump.
This wasnt working so they asked me to have a gander....thats where the fun started.
House was replumbed about 10 years ago by a handy man plumber using iron pipe and some things about it confuse me.
The main lines run through the attics and down into the rooms.
The boiler is an oil fired floor model placed in the kitchen.
The rads are mish mash of pressed steel doubles and cast iron.
1: He had a vent/overflow pipe on both flow and return lines from boiler. Is this normal?
2: He had no safety by pass valves in case of all rads been closed, the hot wtr cly v/vs are allways open so it acts to allways allow flow i think?
3: The feed water line was angled down from the tank down to the main boiler riser, about a third of the way down it was tee'd and from here the overflow vent went back up very high above the header tank and came back down and dangled into the tank.
4: The main return line was tee'd as it left the attic and huge overflow vent pipe ran up the ceiling to dangle back down into the header tank.
I investigated the attic and their hot water tank was rotted badly and had blocked the feed to the boiler line.
So what I did was:
1. I replaced and replumbed the tank.
2. I followed his design of boiler feed and tee'd the overflow as indicated in the below pic.
3. I replaced the return line overflow/vent pipe with an auto air bottle vent.
4. I added another auto air bottle vent onto the return line from the hot water cly.
The boiler now works, it is heating water and most of the rads and cly are heating well but the rads at the back of the house are still cold, after bleeding and balancing most of the other rads I cant get the RADS E16, E17, E18 to warm up at all.
The main feed line to these rads is about 30 ft long from just above boiler to where the lines enter the back rooms ceilings I can get hot water about 10 ft down this line but now further.
These rads have never heated that well say the owner but I have bled them and they are full of water.
Whats my next step?
