HELPHELPHELP! My radiators won't come on!

[QuimReaper]

Of all the fucking times!

Yesterday I put the heating on but nothing happened. The pressure was low so I repressurised it, and still nothing. At one point the boiler was flashing "3,3 bar" which Google seemed to think was a high pressure warning but I restarted the boiler and that went away, and now it's just showing the temperature. Hot water is fine. The thermostat on the wall is on.

Am I missing anything stupid? God of all the times for this to happen!

Aaaah I see! I knew I must be being stupid I've now turned it off "continuous" mode, jimmied the lever again and tried switching it on, and still no joy.

HOWEVER I am enormously chuffed with myself that I now (kind of) know what and where a zone valve is, and to try the lever in future so thank you so so much

Any other suggestions very welcome - Mr is going to try bleeding the radiators today, and then I guess it'll be a plumber job.

So, out of pure idle interest I just had a dekko at the hot water valve, as it didn't seem to have a lever on it. I felt around and found it on the back - I can't see it but I felt a switch and it literally just flicked back and forth, no resistance whatsoever. Is that what the heating one is supposed to be doing? Because if so that's definitely the problem, I can push it slooooowly over to the "man" side and then it just as slowly drifts back into the centre.

Oh my God! OH MY GOD! I just heard some noise from the cupboard and the pipes around the valve are heating up! Maybe it's worked after all?

THE RADIATORS ARE COMING ON!!!

!!!

...and now they're cooling down again

What the hell?

Are you sure the boiler is working and that your hot water is not coming from an immersion heater? Is the immersion heater on the mega flow turned off?

Good question Murinae - I always assumed it was from the boiler but maybe not. Let me see if I can find out.

I will see if I can put together a quick video showing what needs to be done on the zone valve, so that it stays open and allows the pump to circulate the heated water to the radiators. Trying to explain by written word isn't always the best. Is your zone valve made by Honeywell?

Try that link. I think what may be happening is that you m aren't putting the valve into the part that holds it open. There is another possibility, but this is the easiest one to try at the moment without having to go through the whole rigmarole of getting an emergency out and possibly having to pay an extra charge

NRTFT but I had this, boiler fine but radiator in living room wouldn’t come on. Called BG out. So the thing in the radiator you turn to set what level of heat you want ie, 1-5, that also goes up and down! So try pulling that up, it lets Something, possibly water, into the radiator!

He did it and boom, radiator came back on!

Good luck!

Muchly did you really just make that? You are an absolute gem, thank you so much! I love Mumsnet so much, what a lovely thing to do.

I wasn't locking it in the manual position, you're quite right - I've done it properly now... but still no dice

I am so proud of how much I've learned though

I would never recommend to anyone to pull the setting pin on your thermostatic radiator valve valve. If that was stuck, the best thing to do would be to give it a few small,sharp taps at the side, not pull it up as that can break the valve and cause it to leak. With the symptoms that @QuimReaper has described, it definitely won't be this though.

I didn't, thought it best to check YouTube first as I'd be there for ages trying to make it easy for anyone to understand. Have you checked that your timer is set to fire the boiler and the thermostat is cranked up? Also, with the thermostat, is it electronic? If it's "analogue", do you hear a click as you turn it up and down?

Unlikely to be such a simple solution, but are you sure your thermostat just isn't set too low for it to come on?

You won't believe this... the problem was that the batteries had run low on the thermostat! I didn't even know the bastard thing was battery operated, we never even touch it normally!

£160 down but warm and toasty, and the guy even fixed my broken bath plug whilst he was here

Thank you all SO SO much

Ah seem to remember a thread a while ago that turned out to be the same problem

I've arrived late to this party, but the two things that seemed to have been the problem have both happened to me in the past - very common:
1 - the pins in the TRV thermostatic valves on radiators can get stuck down if the rads are off and the TRVs are left on a low number. If you turn off the heating for a while, screw the TRVs up to max number so they don't get stuck down next time you turn on the heating.
2 - check the batteries if you have room thermostats! Yes, they run out quicker than you think. Keep a big box of spares as they're likely to go all at the same time!

Have you reset the clock on the boiler/timer?