Following a recent post, about radiators not getting hot. I promised I would follow up with some of the next steps I would take to solve this problem. Last time, we tried to bleed the air from the radiator, if this didn't solve the issue for you then it sounds as though you might have an air lock in the system, preventing the flow of hot water from your gas boiler to reach your radiator. To Remove an air lock the following steps should cure it, you don't need to be a plumbing expert for this but good luck!
1. First things first, to remove an air lock from a radiator, we need to turn off all of the radiators except the radiator that isn't getting hot. This will give the central heating pump no option but circulate the central heating water to the radiator. This can be done by only one side of the radiator, its really easy if you have thermostatic radiator valves installed on your radiators as you can easily turn the dial round to zero. If you do not have thermostatic radiator vales then turning a standard radiator valve clockwise, will isolate the radiator.
2. Once this is done, we need all of the power from the pump to circulate around the central heating only, this will help push an air lock out of the system. Depending on what type of central heating system you have, you might have a combi gas boiler so this will be done automatically when you turn your central heating on. If you have a stored hot water cylinder, then you will need to turn the demand for your how water off. Removing an air lock from a radiator or central heating, on a system that is fed from a tank in a loft can quite difficult.
3. Just to confuse matters, there could be something called an automatic bypass valve installed on your central heating system. This could affect how our ability to remove an air lock from the central heating system. I wouldn't worry too much about this just yet because if this is not set correctly once we're complete you could cause damage to your central heating pump.
4. So now that we have isolated our radiators and made sure our hot water is set to the off position, the pump should force the air lock to release itself. You may need to remove the air from the radiator once this happens. Read our article about how to remove air from a radiator
5. Once your radiator is nice and hot, make sure that the hot water is circulating around to both pipes coming out of the radiator. This indicates that we have good circulation. An air lock being released usually makes a kind of glugging sound so be on the listen for that.
6. Now you can open up your radiators again and everything should be ok.
If the steps to remove the air lock hasn't been successful, then it could be something a little bit more sinister and things begin to get a little bit technical. It would require a little bit of investigation. So this is as far as my tutorial for this issue can go. If you're within our covered area, then please get in contact with us and we can send out an emergency plumber to assist you.
www.diynot.com is a good forum with lots of questions and answers there, should you wish to find any more information about this matter.
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