Air locks?

[Violetcharlotte]

Just looking for some advice. I'm renting my house and get an air lock at least once a week that means I have no hot water. The maintenance company my landlord uses has shown me how to fix it, but it's still annoying and inconvenient. The maintenance company seem uninterested in looking into what's causing the problem. Does anyone have any ideas what causes it and how to fix it permanently?

When you put your thumb on the spout of the cold water tap in the kitchen, you can't stop the flow. Can you stop of the flow of any of the other taps?

Have you got a pumped shower?

Have you got a hot water cylinder? Is there a small cold water tank on top, that you can hear filling up? Or is it in the loft? Can you look into it with a torch? How above the taps is it? Photos would help.

What do you do to fix the airlock? Which taps does it affect? when?

When I turn the hot tap on in my bathroom, nothing comes out. Has been like for a week, the bath works but not sink.

Is that an airlock?!

Hi PigletJohn thanks for your reply.

When I put my thumb over the cold taps in the bathroom I can stop the flow.

The shower is pumped (I believe) I can get hot water from the shower when it's not working elsewhere.

There is a tank in the loft - when I first moved here they put a bigger tank in as they thought that the tank was emptying out when we were showering and this was causing the air blocks.

There's a hot water cylinder in the airing cupboard.

To fix it, I have to unscrew the shower head from the hose, turn the bath hot water tap on, then hold the hose over the bath tap as tight as I can, then turn the shower on. I have to repeat this several times. Eventually the hot water starts coming out of the taps again.

Here are pictures of the shower pump and hot water cylinder.

It affects all of the hot water taps (kitchen sink, bathroom sink and bath). It happens at least once a week.

sorry, your pics are not displaying for me, and I am getting confused with two similar threads..

Is yours a cream cylinder and a red pump?

The cylinder appears to be cream and to have a metal casing, which is unusual. Is the casing hot?

The red pump is not a shower pump, it is a boiler pump designed to send heat from the boiler to the radiators and/or the cylinder. It would be useful to see the pipes around the pump and cylinder

You might have a shower pump somewhere as well. It will tend to be a motor with a pump at each end, each end should have two pipes going to it, and in and an out hot and one end, and an in and an out cold at the other end. It will probably start, noisily, when you turn the shower on.

Additionally:

the tap where you can't stop the flow is at mains pressure (or possibly pumped). The taps where your thumb can stop the flow are at low pressure from the tank.

It appears that your kitchen cold tap is the only one at mains pressure.

Usually, an air lock in the hot taps can be cleared at the kitchen sink. Do you have a kitchen mixer, or individual taps?

A shower pump can suck air into the pipes if it is unskilfully connected. See if it goes to the pipe coming out of the top of the cylinder. Some shower mixers incorporate their own pump, either in an unusually large mixer case on the wall, or in the ceiling above.

Separate shower mixers are usually under the bath or beside the cylinder. Sometimes they are near the cold tank