Some radiators not working !??

[Jazz12]

aibu to think it’s the fcuking boiler??

4 radiators in the house (all furthest from the boiler) have stopped working. These were working fine until a few days ago.

1. the pipes under them are cold
2. turning off all other radiators isn’t helping
3. no trapped air, we bled all of them.
4. a couple of radiators are working even after turning them off (using tuning thing at the bottom)

Anything else I can try before I call someone ? Could it be the boiler? Frozen pipes? (They are all on the outside wall) I’m surprised 4 radiators stopped working at the same time?!

If your boiler heats up water stored in a hot water tank, you should have a pump which pushes the water around the radiators.
in my experience they have 3 speeds.
we used to have to set the pump speed to III in the winter to get the same heat to all the radiators before we did some balancing.
its worth checking your pump speed.

Pump would look something like this, you can see the speed dial on the side.
www.screwfix.com/p/grundfos-ups-15-50n-traditional-secondary-hot-water-circulator-230v/930fh

Counting the turns on rebalancing If one gets 2 turns & one gets 1 3 or 4 it alters the speed flow of return water back to boiler. So hot water stays in a rad longer than the rest. Balancing is all about getting water back at the same speed. It’s a long process

This problem is straightforward if tackled in a methodical way.

All rads we’re left working so we have in theory no pump problem as they worked before.
Trv were changed x2 (?).
Rads furthest from heat source now cold after trv changed. This is indicating to myself that some sludge has been moved in the system by the very nature of taking the bits off Now the sludge (if ) has found the lowest point & blocked the input

were The stats replaced on the cold rads before they went down or elsewhere? if so are they working

this is interesting. Ours is GRUNDFOS ALPHA2

Apologies for the confusion,
Only the two way valves were replaced. These:

Nothing changed with the radiators. 3 out of 4 cold radiators were working fine until a few days ago (1 i am not sure as we didn’t use that room much)

So are we now say the only valves that were replaced are the diverter as indicated in the picture ? Not a trv

Best guess would be your pump is losing it's ooomph. Check its turned up to maximum. If it was working properly until recently and it's all of a sudden gone wrong then i imagine it is the pump.

If you find the pump and its speed selector and move the selector switch through the speeds, usually 1-3 then you should hear the noise of the pump change. If it doesn't then it's an indication it's dying.

We have just had this with one of ours. We unscrewed the thermostat and took it off and there is a little pin sticking up, this can get jammed and stop the radiator working so give it a wiggle with some pliers until it can move up and down freely and it should work again! Fingers crossed it works for you!

If that unit is the above picture look on the wired end you will see a switch with auto on it & a flag piece of metal. Move the flag to the right of unit & click into place. This is manual override

That’s correct. TRVs (attached to the radiator) were not replaced.

sorry for the confusion

We’ve done this. They go down when pressed with a hard object like the plier or the back of a spoon.

By “freely”, do you mean it should go down when pressed with my finger?

we have two Honeywell valves

ValveA made a winding coil noise when hot water is turned on or off. So I suspect that’s the hot water valve. It’s working ok.

valve B made the same noise when we turned the heating off.

with both heating and hot water off, the pump turned off too.

looks like the pump is working ok. It’s ramping up the numbers when i increase the setting. It was already on maximum setting . The function looks smooth, no obvious signs of struggle.

What’s the next logical step? REplace TRVs?
If TRVs were a problem, would you expect the pipes on either side of the radiator to still heat up?

ONE NEW PIECE OF INFO. which I though was irrelevant until now. We installed a water softener a few months ago. Could that have dislodged limescale that went and clogged up pipes somewhere!??

@Jazz12 yeh the pin should be able to move just with the pressure of a finger on it. I would say if it needs the pliers to get it moving it's still a bit stuck. Took a while to wiggle it enough to free it and used some WD40 on there as well to help it on its way.

Check your pressure. Turn off all the other radiators and leave 1 at a time that's not working on for 10mins to hopefully push any trapped air in the system through. Had a similar issue not long ago

your water soft will not interfere

You must have stronger fingers than me.

🤣🤣

👍🏼

@Jazz12

Just wanted to come back to this thread as was watching with interest. I was having a very similar issue - certain rads mostly / fully cold. Others very hot.

I've had this issue before & tried remedies from before including bleeding rads, rebalancing. No joy.

My boiler is working fine but is not a great one & I'm going to change it after Christmas.

Like the UK, we're having a very cold snap here in Ireland and I had barely any heat & it was miserable.

I finally got a plumber after a week of trying everywhere. He initially thought it was an airlock, but now feels there's sludge in the system so I'll need a power flush. I had one done 4 years ago, which did work, but apparently should have been done for longer.

He has improved matters, I've somewhat more heat. But it's not anywhere like it needs to be.

I know this sounds obvious but I think you'll need to get someone in & go from there. There are a variety of reasons & think ultimately you need good professional knowledge to know which one it is. I hope you get sorted!

Thank you. I tried to get someone in to have a look today. Plumbers are very busy. Looks like we have to live in the warmer parts of the house for a while now.

The plumber came to look at mine today (same issue as yours) and it did just need rebalancing - all getting warm now.

I know it's hard getting a plumber, I must have tried 15 including a service provided by one of the gas companies where they match you up with someone & no joy. A bad week to be having heating difficulties!

I finally got lucky as this plumber lives a street away from me & happened to be doing a job for my neighbours so was able to pop in.

At least I've someone on the case, even if it's not fully sorted. Hope you get someone soon.