Just been asked to an estimate for a ‘Powerflush’ on a central heating system because the homeowner always wants a second quote.
No problem, I can do that for you.
Go and have a look, 19 rads and hot water cylinder I have good idea how much I will charge for that.
So by the way, who suggested a power flush?
British gas. They do the maintenance on the homecare contract.
Great, what was the problem?
Ah, the lady of the house can’t get hot water without the central heating running, British gas say it’s cos the system is full of sludge.
Do the radiators all heat up when the heating is on?
Er, yes. Why?
Because your problem is a faulty zone valve which British gas are contracted to replace on your homecare!!!!!
A powerfully will not fix it!
But British gas will charge you a lot of money for something you don’t need.
You have been warned!

Just out of interest ,approx how much for a 10 rad system powerflush ?

Yep, they’ve been trying to push that to us as well but luckily the missus manages a bunch of commercial heating engineers so we just bought the appropriate chemicals and flushed the system ourselves.

I had similar. Told I needed a power flush as one rad was constantly cold. Turned out it was due to the rads on the loop needed the flow balancing.

2 customers in the last year, one had a magnetic gizmo fitted to clean his system of metalic bits, when i pointed out the only magnetic bits where in the pump or the radiators and theyre usually treated not to rust, he paid a lot of cash.

Second customer,BG said he neede an air vent into his attic space for the bioiler that was in the kitchen in a bungalow, they wanted about 200 quid to fit and check, i bought one from screwfix and fitted it for 30 quid.

Beaware of BG money raising tactics

glad I read this,

Our combi pressure sits at nearly zero when off but is about 2 bar (in the middle of the green bit) when running. Am I right in that a form of pressure vessel sits in the top of the boiler to maintain pressure when either hot or cold?

and the 2nd point was that I was going to get BG to come and sort it.

seems I may have to be careful, with what they quote

Sounds like expansion vessel trouble. Check the little pipe that goes outside is not dripping.

the over flow pipe is not dripping. probably because it runs at the right pressure, it just drops to nearly zero when cold.

Had them say something similar to us a coupla years ago when we were having problems with our, admittedly getting on a bit, boiler. In the middle of winter.
Pipes were rattling, boiler cutting out without warning and losing pressure all the time- had about nine or ten visits, various bits replaced, told we prob had a leak under downstairs floor… Problem continued, ended up having to stay with in laws for 2 nights cos we had no heating and a new baby. Turned out a thermostat/heat regulator was gubbed, water was superheating and turning to steam hence the noise!!
Pita at the time but had them out at all times of the day, they were always pleasant to deal with and they fixed it eventually! They also gave us some free fan heaters to use.. Still come in handy for the garage!

our problems stem from the towel rail radiator we have in the bathroom, which looks something like this:

It has 13 horizontal bars on it, but the valve at the bottom says 10 bar, so I think it must be underrated. The BG guy always laughs at me when I mention it, for some reason…

I have the homecare contract with bg and find most of the engineers are very good at fixing problems ,but a few are inexperienced and think flushing a system will cure the problem ,in most case,s the flushing engineer will not carry out/charge for the work ,there,s good :-)and bad 👿 in most trades

Beware indeed. The BG operative who came out to do our annual “service” obviously didn’t have a clue. After performing the work he packed his tools & left. I legged it round to the school to pick up the wee fella & returned home. About an hour later I had to go into the utility room where the boiler is to feed the cat. I was hit by a “wall” of gas as I opened the door & promptly shut it again. I got everyone out & opened the outside door to the utility room to vent the place to get rid of the gas & then called Transco. They were there in short order & at first told me they could find nothing wrong 😀 When I pressed him for an answer he produced a little bit of tinfoil & admitted that the bloke who’d done the service has snapped off the “test port” & capped it of using the bit of foil.

The excuses they made were laughable in light of the possible consequences. Like my boiler was so old that the engineer wouldn’t have been able to get a spare part to replace the broken bit 😆

Nobbers

D.

we had a contract with them a long while ago

every year they’d come & service the boiler; a week later it’d fail

we had specialist teams, the lot. nobody got it properly sorted

then I got a service geezer from vaillant in to have a look. looked it over for about 10min and said that it had been wired up dangerously and that the timer was also wrongly wired (negative vs positive earth or something along those lines). fixed the wiring and that was it, sorted for life (binned BG the same year) but got the vaillant guy to service it every couple of years

the BG team use ‘homecare’ and similar products to gain acess to your home. the engineers recieve comission for every thing they sell above your contract so power flushes, magnetic filters are all fair game and money earners for engineers and BG.

frankly the homecare type products are rarely of value.
paying 13-18 per mth. is 156- 192 pa when BGs fixed price repairs start at 79 and the max is 399. remeber also that if Bg have fitted a boiler they will get a 5- 10 yr warranty from the manufacturer on that product for which they ask you to pay as much as 1920 quid for over the ten years..

ahh so you get a ‘free’ annnual service.. no you now get a free annual exhaust gas analysis. they stick a probe in the flue and go ahhhh.

Muke, a 10 rad system will cost £300-£500 depending where you live. In Central London it will be much more.
But you probably don’t need one or you could do mini flush yourself.
Put some sludge remover in the system.
Run central heating at full speed for an hour or 2.
Drain it down, drain each radiator.
Fill it up with clean water.
Drain it down again.
Check the colour of the water being drained.
Do this till it runs clear.
Finally fill it up and rust inhibitor, very important!

Vortexracing, you need to get that expansion vessel looked at. Boiler should be 1 to 1.5 bar when cold. Can go up to 2 or even 2.5 when running, up to 3 and you have a problem.

Turnerguy, you made me laugh too…

Turnerguy, you made me laugh too…

I try that one on every plumber/engineer that comes into the house, sometimes they have to think about it for a while…

I told British gas I’d have them arrested if I saw them
On my property again after they made such a bodge job of fitting the boiler and then left us without heating or hot water when it broke two years on the trot.

Obviously I wouldn’t but it felt great saying it.

I have my own hacksaw for cutting off the condensation pipe now when it freezes so I don’t need them any more.

cheers bigad40 will do