Draining your System
At some point we need to drain a system. Although the summers in Louisiana are warm we all like our comforts and have heating for the winter and having winter heating means we have to maintain it. We also have heating in the Louisiana festival office to keep out the night time chills. This means that sometime we will need to work on a metal radiator problem or to extend the system perhaps for the engineers to fit some boiler spares. Normally this job will be performed by our engineer but in some circumstances it can be performed by the experienced maintenance handyman on our boiler parts contract.
In most situations Flushing the central heating is implemented to clean the heating radiators. Before any work is attempted you need to switch off the heating pump and boiler. It is also essential that you do not let any additional water into the central heating system while you clean it.
Our gas central heating boilers are filled up with water through the expansion or header tank. A common ball valve is used in the expansion cistern similar to that in a toilet. Rising water levels in the tank mean that the valve is shut as the ball floats higher on the water surface. If water level falls the ball, floating on the surface, also falls venting the valve and allowing more water into the heating system. To fully empty the gas central heating system this top up process will need to be stopped. Placing a small plank of wood across the water water tank preventing the ball valve from moving will stop further water going into the gas heating system.
Once we have completed the above we run a hosepipe from an outside clean to the outlet of at the bottom of one of our heating radiators. We know what we are doing and checked the boiler manuals last year. Once you vent the outlet valve the water will be able to rate of flow through the hose to the external flush. The hose should be attached to one of the lower heating radiators if you intend to clear the whole gas central heating system. Before you begin any other work on this gas central heating system you must now ensure that all the water has emptied out and no other the water is entering into the heating radiators.
My brother read this and decided that it was not for him. If his boiler broke down he wanted to call on an expert to help him straightaway. He signed up to British Gas Homecare last year and seems to be very pleased – he should be, the boiler failed twice last year and they came and repaired it without any charge – lucky so and so.