I watch some forums to see what people want to know about powerflushing. Today the following post had so many replies after a few hours – some good, some down right dangerous – that I just had to offer an opinion.

Original Post from Ellis Hill

To power flush or not to…
Hello All

I’m looking for an honest opinion! We have just moved into a house with a big radiator sludge problem. The sludge has got round into the boiler and damaged the heat exchanger. My problem is this, have been advised to have power flush done and magnetic valve fitted on the one hand. On the other have been told this is waste of time and removing the individual rads one by one and flushing with garden hose is just as effective(also £600 cheaper). So before the boiler gets repaired, which one works best?

And here’s my reply:

A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. So many well-meaning people have an opinion on anything. So I’ll add my two-penneth.

To give an accurate opinion though there a few things I would need to know. they are the questions I ask anyone before agreeing to do a powerflush for them (Based upon eight years of busy powerflushing experience and twelve years installing/trouble-shooting heating systems.)

1. What make, model and age of boiler do you have?
2. Who says there is a serious sludge problem?
3. Where do you live?
4. What size pipework goes into the radiator valves?
5. Is there anything else going on that is bothering you or might be important?
6. How many rads do you have?

And then, over the phone there would be ohter questions that follow on from that. How anyone can pontificate on Exactly what is the right solution for you without talking to you is beyond me.

Some people think that powerflushing is the best thing since sliced bread. Some think it’s a big rip-off. Both are right. Not really, but there’s no convincing them otherwise.

Personally, I know that powerflushing is great – for some problems.

Other times, it’s just one thing available amongst other solutions and only experience can tell which is best.

Occasionally, it can do more damage than good.

So it’s horses for courses.

Pricewise, any duffer can get themselves a machine, read the instructions, learn how to take a pump off without spraying water over the place and call themselves a powerflush expert. But, in their heart they know the score and (unless they are a sociopath) will not be able to charge what they would if they really were as good as they claimed to be.

For a professional job you have to pay a professional’s price.

Ellis Hill, you don’t mention how many rads you have (Q6), but if for example, you had 7 doubles with an old high-water content boiler with a cast-iron heat exchanger (Q1), with 15mm pipework into the rads (Q4) I could give you an estimate of what a professional power flush would cost you.

If you also told me that you live in a hard water area (Q3) so I knew that you needed a de-scale of the heat exchanger too (subject to answer to Q1) and then gave me as much information as possible (Q5) then I could give you a better idea.

After all of that, if it’s apparent that nothing else is going on with your system, and that you really do need a power flush then I’d give you a firm price. In this example, £475.00 inc VAT. A magnaclean would be extra but if the job is done well most older boilers do not need them fitted. (And they are only designed to protect the boiler after all.)

I hope that helps.

If you have any questions specific to your situation please PM me and we can talk over the phone. Happy to offer advice whether you are in my area or not.

Best wishes

Ian Pritchard

Today, 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

Blimey, what a week!

You think you’ve had it tough?

4 powerflushes done (three were two man jobs on microbore). Two other jobs visited and one dosed up with hyperflush ready for the job next Tuesday.

Kids running riot (well not really but it does feel like it sometimes). One rather uncomfortable visit to the hospital.

Time to relax and watch a real expert at work. You gotta watch this.

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.