Archive for the ‘Hot Water Issues’ Category

Power flushing a system with a Fortic tank

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

Fortic Tanl picture - not the one we powerflushed, but like itToday, Chris and I met a man who feels the cold more than most of us. Born with a condition that any of us blessed with ‘good health’ would hate to have. Cerebral palsy is a massively mis-understood thing what you are born with. Often, you end-up being a spastic; the meaning originally from the the Greek and then the Latin for “to pull”. Nowadays, apart from yob insults the meaning is literally, “tight muscle”. Fortunately, he has a great sense of humour.

When his regular heating engineer diagnosed a blockage that he could not deal with they went on the net, came across our website (www.pritchard-heating.co.uk) and called 01225-869036.

Without blowing our own trumpet, It was a bloody good idea that WE did the power flush.

The heating/hot water system uses a Very old Fortic tank model (not the one shown above) that would be a right bugger for an in-experienced powerflushing guy to even figure out how to powerflush competently.

And the water flow from the boiler was just about completely blocked. At first there was not flow at all. And then, because we know what to do, eventually we began to get some flow. A fairly short time later with some more jiggery-pokery and the right chemical to start the disintegration, suddenly at first and then full bore – we had full flow though the boiler. Where none had existed before.

Result!

Now that the first big problem was out of the way we could turn our attention to the secondary, less important problems that had been around for years. e.g the hall radiator was only tepid for the last heating season and the dining room warmish. So those were the first to be done and then everthing else. A beautifully hot system – so much so that we turned down the boiler stat to stop the radiators getting too hot.

One very happy – very warm – customer. Two very happy central heating powerflushers.

If you have a big problem with your central heating -cold rads, poor hot water, fortic tank – give us a call. Advice is always free whether you choose to use us or not.

Office: 01225-869036

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Be careful when power flushing a Baxi 100 HE

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

A gentleman from Hayling Island phoned to get a quote for a powerflush of his largish system. The usual problems; cold spots on rads, slow warm up times, etc.

When he mentioned that he has a Baxi 100HE a little warning light came on in my head. Initially, I was concerned that it may have an aluminium heat exchanger (acids a no-no). Fortunately, it’s policy that we always check out that any boiler we haven’t come across can be powerflushed. And there are hundreds – some common, some not so common. If we haven’t already worked on the precise version/model of a particular boiler we call the manufacturer’s tech support to make sure that we can use our usual choice of heating system cleaning chemical. Time consuming for us, but necessary.

Today, I was very glad our pre-checking system is rigorous.

Turns out the Baxi 100HE has a paddle-type flow switch than could be damaged by the instant reversing of water flow used by any competent powerflusher. And it’s not mentioned in their installer manual for the boiler.

The best wayto proceed is to isolate the boiler, make some temporary connections to the flow and return primary circuit, power flush and de-scale the rads and then re-instate the boiler. Dose with inhibitor and re-balance – of course.

After a quick call back to the customer to confirm what we had found and to confirm the best wat to proceed he was happy to give the go-ahead and we’re booked in to do the job next week.

Should be a nice one. Always pays to be prepared.

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