What am I doing wrong?

[officialsimon]

My central heating system is a normal old fashioned one, ie not combi or condensing boiler. It's a glowworm boiler. I know nothing about how central heating works but I can see that there's the pop-out switch on the boiler and there's the on and off switch on the boiler (both under the slide off panel, there's the wall mounted thermostat, there's a thermostat on the hot water cylinder, an immersion heater switch on the wall (which I've never tried to use anyway) and whatever else I've missed. My problem is that I can't get my radiators to come on and stay on.

Fiddling about with some of the aforementioned items has had a bit of shortlived success but normally they stubbornly refuse to come on or the pilot light comes on and the boiler starts when I fiddle with some things, but goes out pretty quickly ie stops with a minute or so. What am I doing wrong? The hot water heating side of the equation works fine, it's getting the boiler to start and heat the radiators that's bombarzling me. Are there some optimum settings/basic rules that I'm not following? Help!

 

[Elkato531]

Is the pump running when the CH is calling? If you have a gravity hot water system it will still work when pump not running. You may have one or more motorized valves on the system. They may not be working correctly. Try opening them manually to see if heat gets round.

 

[officialsimon]

Is the pump running when the CH is calling? If you have a gravity hot water system it will still work when pump not running. You may have one or more motorized valves on the system. They may not be working correctly. Try opening them manually to see if heat gets round.

Well to be honest you're talking double Dutch and all Greek to me, can you split that down into thicko's English for me? What pumps, where, what do I look for?

 

[kevplumb]

View media item 11149 View media item 11148 View media item 17592
any of the above

 

[officialsimon]

The third one, the red one.

 

[kevplumb]

thats a pump

is it working

 

[officialsimon]

I don't know, how do I tell? Like I said, my radiators came on last night and when they went off with the timer at midnight I expected to come home from work the next day and find them on again, having come on with the timer at 5pm, but not so.

 

[kevplumb]

ok

the screw marked bleed in the pic (click on it to enlarge)

undo that you will get a bit of water out

you should be able to see the shaft spinning

if not stick a narrow bladed screwdriver in the hole

and spin the shaft

 

[dextrous]

if not stick a narrow bladed screwdriver in the hole

and spin the shaft

You could do this all night if you want to get the rads warm

 

[kevplumb]

if not stick a narrow bladed screwdriver in the hole

and spin the shaft

You could do this all night if you want to get the rads warm

sometimes i just dispair of you

 

[Diyisfun]

Kev..it made me smile though.