Long time reader, first time poster.
We moved into our current house about 4 years ago. Never undertaken any major projects but I am planning on overhauling the entire radiator pipework within the house over this summer and upgrading the heating control to include a thermostat as we don’t have one. I believe the boiler and hot water system were originally installed 15-20 years ago with an added radiator system retrofitted later when the electric night storage heaters were removed. One of the jobs was removing all the old wiring and switches which were just left.
Admittedly we’ve never done any regular maintenance on the central heating system as a whole and over last winter we were getting lots of air collecting in the first radiator and entrained air being sucked through the pump. After looking on here a suggestion was a blocked T-piece from the CH header tank. Sure enough draining the system left the header tank full. I cut out the t-piece and surrounding pipes which were totally blocked, and rinsed the system through until the drainage was clear. A week of descaler and then refilled with inhibitor and it’s almost as good as new. Now we get a tiny gathering of air once a week or so in the bleed trap by the pump, but the heating has been off now for a while.
Anyway over the last few years we’ve had various floor boards up, the radiator pipework is a right old mess. Whoever installed it used the microbore flexi pipe stuff and it’s been fairly hamfistedly fitted, one run goes through a notch chiselled out of the joist, but the gap isn’t deep enough so when the floor boards were put back they have partially squashed the pipes.
The plan is to carry out the work over the next 3 months, going round room by room, replacing all microbore pipe with 15mm runs from the 22mm tees, replacing all radiators and fitting TRVs as the existing ones are seized solid. I’ve never done any brazing before but it looks straightforward enough and have access to a pipe bender and drills etc so the actual installation shouldn’t be too bad.
We have a typical unsealed system, open header tanks in the loft, so am I able to simply cut and block off the radiator part of the central heating circuit leaving the hot water functioning as normal by removing the y-valve and bypassing it with an elbow it so it only flows to the HW tank?
I would like to pressure test each section before replacing all the floorboards so I know the runs are good. Are there relatively cheap kits available for such testing? I could probably make up a set of fittings at work to take a pressure gauge and pump, is it just a case of pressurising the run and leaving it overnight and checking there is no pressure loss? What sort of pressure should I go up to?
Can someone recommend a decent brazing torch? It’s once in a blue moon I’ll be doing this sort of thing so I won’t need top of the line but on the other hand don’t want to be struggling and want to do a good job.
The other main job will be replacing the hot water cylinder and adding a shower pump but that’s maybe next year or later this summer depending on radiator progress. I’m aware I will need an additional cold supply to be tapped off the HW cylinder header tank to ensure equal pressure supply of hot and cold. I plan on raising the HW cylinder header tank in the loft to improve head as a matter of course.
I’ve read I need an Essex flange (?) on the HW cylinder to ensure no bubbles are in the water flow to the shower pump, can someone explain the workings of it?
Will the shower pump need to be wired in by a qualified electrician and will all pipe work in the bathroom need earthing straps (I would plan on using them anyway just wondering if it’s a legal requirement)?
Sorry for the epic post, any advice greatly appreciated.
Stan
We moved into our current house about 4 years ago. Never undertaken any major projects but I am planning on overhauling the entire radiator pipework within the house over this summer and upgrading the heating control to include a thermostat as we don’t have one. I believe the boiler and hot water system were originally installed 15-20 years ago with an added radiator system retrofitted later when the electric night storage heaters were removed. One of the jobs was removing all the old wiring and switches which were just left.
Admittedly we’ve never done any regular maintenance on the central heating system as a whole and over last winter we were getting lots of air collecting in the first radiator and entrained air being sucked through the pump. After looking on here a suggestion was a blocked T-piece from the CH header tank. Sure enough draining the system left the header tank full. I cut out the t-piece and surrounding pipes which were totally blocked, and rinsed the system through until the drainage was clear. A week of descaler and then refilled with inhibitor and it’s almost as good as new. Now we get a tiny gathering of air once a week or so in the bleed trap by the pump, but the heating has been off now for a while.
Anyway over the last few years we’ve had various floor boards up, the radiator pipework is a right old mess. Whoever installed it used the microbore flexi pipe stuff and it’s been fairly hamfistedly fitted, one run goes through a notch chiselled out of the joist, but the gap isn’t deep enough so when the floor boards were put back they have partially squashed the pipes.
The plan is to carry out the work over the next 3 months, going round room by room, replacing all microbore pipe with 15mm runs from the 22mm tees, replacing all radiators and fitting TRVs as the existing ones are seized solid. I’ve never done any brazing before but it looks straightforward enough and have access to a pipe bender and drills etc so the actual installation shouldn’t be too bad.
We have a typical unsealed system, open header tanks in the loft, so am I able to simply cut and block off the radiator part of the central heating circuit leaving the hot water functioning as normal by removing the y-valve and bypassing it with an elbow it so it only flows to the HW tank?
I would like to pressure test each section before replacing all the floorboards so I know the runs are good. Are there relatively cheap kits available for such testing? I could probably make up a set of fittings at work to take a pressure gauge and pump, is it just a case of pressurising the run and leaving it overnight and checking there is no pressure loss? What sort of pressure should I go up to?
Can someone recommend a decent brazing torch? It’s once in a blue moon I’ll be doing this sort of thing so I won’t need top of the line but on the other hand don’t want to be struggling and want to do a good job.
The other main job will be replacing the hot water cylinder and adding a shower pump but that’s maybe next year or later this summer depending on radiator progress. I’m aware I will need an additional cold supply to be tapped off the HW cylinder header tank to ensure equal pressure supply of hot and cold. I plan on raising the HW cylinder header tank in the loft to improve head as a matter of course.
I’ve read I need an Essex flange (?) on the HW cylinder to ensure no bubbles are in the water flow to the shower pump, can someone explain the workings of it?
Will the shower pump need to be wired in by a qualified electrician and will all pipe work in the bathroom need earthing straps (I would plan on using them anyway just wondering if it’s a legal requirement)?
Sorry for the epic post, any advice greatly appreciated.
Stan
