Another cold new house, don't know what to do

[thegraduand]

Moved in to a new house, we have oil fired central heating. There is definitely oil in the tank. The system keeps losing pressure. I've repressuirsed it several times tonight and it loses it again in 10 mins or so. We've no idea how to fix it, if we call a plumber we're not quite sure what to ask for. It's getting really cold and couldn't give DD a bath tonight, would be lovely to get it sorted, any advice welcome

My DH says - check if any of the little pipes that point out of the house, near the boiler are leaking. If there's one low down at ground level on the outside of the house with a valve on it, the valve should be closed, so check that. If there's a leaking pipe higher up, this could mean that the blowoff valve has become blocked. If neither of those is leaking, can you tell whether the system loses pressure even without being turned on? If the answer is yes, chances are it's a leak somewhere. Otherwise, you might have a problem with the pressure vessel which might be inside the boiler. There are tests you can google for on how to test one of these pressure vessels if you have a car pump with a pressure gauge. Basically, if you can find an air valve on the pressure vessel and press the pin and air comes out, the vessel may be ok, but if there is no air it may have a fault - you could try pumping it up again with a car pump. Hope that helps.

Also, if this is a house you've just bought from someone else, you only have a few days to report any heating problems, so make sure you get onto the seller if you can't sort it out.

Brilliant, thanks we'll have a look at those. We didn't really have the heating on for the first few days as we were low on oil, think its too late to go back to the vendors

Did you check to see if Rads were drained down.

Left for extended periods system may freeze, which is why rads have been drained to prevent bursts.
Boiler will shut off due to high limit stat/ protection from overheating.

Fill and vent all rads and pipework and at boiler, try again, cross fingers and hope boiler is not damaged.
Or check and see that fuel lines are open

The vessel pipe work may also have a blockage. Which means no expansion can take place, means water will be dumped via pressure relief valve, when heated

Thanks for all the advice, DH has bled the radiators, which has certainly made things a lot warmer. The house was never really left empty as the other people moved out and we moved in quickly.

you say it is losing pressure. What does the pressure gauge say, before and after you top it up?

did you look at the pipe coming through the wall behind the boiler?

BTW forget the vendors, houses are 'sold as seen', it was up to you to get things checked beforehand. And of course there's no way of knowing when this problem started.

if none of these solve it, you need an OFTEC registered heating engineer. Like all heating engineers, they are very busy this time of year so get looking.

oil fired boilers also need an annual service.