No central heating, help! @pigletjohn

[TiddleTaddleTat]

Boiler seems to be firing up OK, hot water is fine. We are getting occasional ‘no water flow fault’ displayed which asks us to fill system to 1-1.5bar, bleed rads. This has been done and all radiators remain cold.
Feed to bathroom towel rail rad is hot but cold about 10cm upwards. This is the closest rad to the boiler.
No radiators are getting hot at all.

Background :

• problem started when DH bled radiators on Saturday.
• one of the bleed valves started leaking and has been replaced today, now not leaking.
• boiler is ideal vogue max combi 32 and 3 years old.

Help! Freezing here .

Desperate bump!

Try bleeding rads when heating is on if you haven’t done that

Thanks for your reply. While they are on? Why ?
They don’t get hot at all.

Any other ideas ? Can’t get a plumber here til Thursday so a bit desperate.

Hope pigletjohn shows up

What is the pressure indicator showing? Does it stay fairly consistent?

Did all the valves definitely get closed after they were bled?

Pressure is fairly consistent around 1.5. Rises slightly as expected when switched on with thermostat.
The only lockshield valve turned off was on the rad that had the bleed valve replaced. Now fully open. All other rad bleed valves were closed.

Just tried it again just now and this time not even the flow to the nearest rad is getting hot. I suspect pump issue ? Boiler is only 3 years old but is in warranty. Just can’t get my head round this issue NOT being connected to the bleeding of rads and leaking bleed valve.

When you bleed the rads do you get water coming out? The only reason I said try with heating on is when I had some work to my heating system there was so much air trapped it took ages to balance the radiators and pressure kept needing to be topped up as air was released from bleed valves. When heating wasn’t on I got air out but no water. Needed the extra pressure from system being active to force the air round and out

Ah I see, thanks. Yes water is coming out when I bleed them. I could try bleeding after having the heating on I suppose. I’m just concerned that I keep running it but without anything heating up except the boiler.

It sounded very much like air when you said the towel rail got hot apart from the top 10cm

I would have thought with a combi if the pump failed you’d have no hot water circulating either. Maybe google bypass valve for your boiler and see if you can see any YouTube videos

@Ridingthegravytrain

It sounded very much like air when you said the towel rail got hot apart from the top 10cm

Ah sorry I probably wasn’t clear - it was only the bottom 10cm of the flow pipe that got hot. So everything above 10cm on the c.1.2m high towel radiator was stone cold.

Try turning off all lock shields bar one radiator (maybe closest) and see if that heats up

Or make sure you haven’t inadvertently turned off or knocked the boiler flow when topping it up (black tap needs to be vertical not horizontal)

Hmm. Boiler flow? This is what it looks like underneath. Unfortunately it was DH that filled the boiler last after bleeding rads. I usually do it. I noticed he had left one of the blue taps in line with the pipes so corrected it. He was adamant that he had turned both. The black tap on the right is horizontal. In the ideal manual this looks like it should be vertical. I’ve tried to turn it though and it’s very stiff !! Should I persist?

Sorted. DH had turned off the CH return by accident. !!

Glad it’s sorted it’s easy to do by accident

Thanks for your help @Ridingthegravytrain it made me think to go back to the manual and check all the taps