Heating system is so bloody loud - I’m at my wits end!

[ChocolateBiscuit2]

I’m hoping someone has some advice, we have a fairly old heating system - one with a water tank in the airing cupboard, it used to have a cold water tank in the loft but this was capped off (?) recently.

The whole system is crap anyway, we run out of hot water after one shower, radiators don’t get hot enough in two rooms - air is constantly trapped in the system causing loud bangs etc. We have to bleed all radiators every month. We’ve spent hundreds on various pumps being fixed, system cleans or whatever they are called etc. and it sorts itself out for a few months before the next winter when it creates some new issue. Last winter we spent about £1K on various fixes as the heating totally stopped working and I was about to bring a newborn home. I’m about ready to set fire to it and it’s crappy microbore pipes 😂.

Anyway it’s always been quite loud-ish when the heating is on, but the last year or so it’s ridiculous, there’s a constant low rumbling which sounds as though there’s a car idling on the driveway. It’s driving me absolutely insane. I’m wondering if anyone has experienced this before, and knows how to stop it?

also please someone tell me a combi boiler would be absolutely fine for a house with 2 bathrooms 🤞🏻🤞🏻

@GasPanic thank you so much for this.
I am a total novice to this as you’ve probably guessed - how do I find out if it’s vented or invented etc.?

Im pleased to know microbore is the gold standard as the heating engineer made it sounds like a negative.

In terms of it clogging up etc. As you’ve mentioned, I believe it has had a power flush in Jan 23, would you have expected this to have solved that issue?

@OlderGlaswegianLivingInDevon most the engineers think it’s a brilliant system that we should continue to fix until it totally gives up the ghost, but they don’t have to live with its issues 😂

I suspect if I seriously pushed them to replace they’d prefer to keep the same set-up, just newer

I wouldn't say microbore is a gold standard :)

Unvented is though. If you had your cold water tank removed there is a fair possibility you now have unvented.

Microbore needs to be looked after. The positives are that it is really easy to replace radiators on a microbore system, just push fit rather than pipe extensions/soldering. The bad news is that the pipe size is more limited which obviously limits the flow rate and ultimately the amount of energy you can transfer over the network, and it can also be prone to clogging, so it needs to looked after by using a good inhibitor and a magnetic trap can also help remove debris/sludge from the system.

@GasPanic apologies I got mixed up with the gold standard thing 😊!

okay thank you - this makes sense. So if we did move to a combi, would microbore pipes be adequate or likely to cause issues?

silly question but also with a combi, would we still need to do inhibitors etc to take care of the microbore?

thanks so much

I think you've debris in your system

If it is unvented it will normally say so on the cylinder. MegaFlo is a popular brand. There will be additiional valves around the cylinder to allow for overpressure. If your cylinder has a name on the front you can google it.

A combi boiler should perform pretty much the same way on a microbore central heating loop as a system boiler. So if the problem is with the microbore then swapping for a combi boiler will be unlikely to solve the problems IMO. Yes you still need inhibitor in there. Heating engineers can be a bit cavalier on how much inhibitor they put in. Also my experience is that they are not great on refills either - probably because it is the end of the job and they just want to get out of there without checking it all. The last time I had mine done they did a good job, but left quite a bit of air in the system that I had to get out later. There are some tricks as to how you should refill a system after draining it and some engineers are better than others at making sure the system is fully refilled.

If two of your radiators are not getting warm at all, either there is a severe blockage in the pipes/radiator or a massive amount of air in the system. That could explain all the banging. Another possibility is of course you have a leak somewhere or a failed expansion vessel. Anyway, I would refill the system and make sure all the radiators were full of water and note down the pressure. See whether the pressure changes a lot with time (it will change when you turn the heating on, but at the same temperature if the system is closed then it should stay roughly the same for a long time unless there is a leak).