Air today, gone tomorrow.
We all know your central heating system is filled with water, maybe something else your plumber said he was putting in there as well but that's about it? Wrong - It's jam packed full of air.
Air, primarily oxygen, is the enemy of a highly efficient central heating system and as an industry, we absolutely fail to deal with it.
What's the issue with air?
Corrosion is the issue. From the day you install a new radiator, it starts rusting from the inside out. That's caused by moisture and oxygen meeting the metal. Clearly you can't keep all oxygen out as its literally part of the water however, the bubbles within the water introduce way more, and its hungry. It will chomp into your radiators, killing them from the inside.
As the corrosion occurs small bits break off into the water and wizz round your central heating, in to your boiler and start causing chaos in there as well. Moving parts, narrow waterways and dirt aren't happy bedfellows. It's hard to fully quantify but stats of around 80% of boiler breakdowns being due to poor water quality match with our real world experience of repairing boilers in and around Exeter.
The corrosion also sits in your radiators, filling them from the bottom meaning they don't heat up as well, that means your boiler has to run longer to get your home to the required temperature.
Fine, but thats why I get told to put a filter on and inhibitor in the system isn't it?
This is where it gets awkward for the heating industry. When installing gas boilers in the UK, installers are pushed to install a magnetic filter on your system pipework. The purpose is to catch corrosion before it has chance to get in to your boiler. Ok, makes sense.
Installers are also pressed by the industry to put an inhibitor in your system. This supposedly helps stop corrosion forming in the first place.
Wait a sec, if corrosion doesn't form in the first place, why do we need a filter? And this is where it falls apart slightly.
Testing for inhibitor is difficult and inaccurate (Test kits don't always check for each type of inhibitor), when systems get drained down (to fit a radiator for example) inhibitor is rarely added when filled back up with fresh oxygenated water and its also inconclusive how good inhibitors are at stopping corrosion.
What SHOULD be done then?
As the saying goes, prevention is better than the cure. We need to stop air getting in the system in the first place, that stops the corrosion forming in the first place, removing the need for inhibitor (which then negates all the issues with it) and reduces/removes the need for a filter.
Frustratingly, there is a device that is simple to fit, that removes air from the system before its circulated. Air separators are one of the most important parts of your heating system yet they are very rarely installed, so much so, at the local merchants, they are bought in specially for Lombardi Heating as "nobody else uses them". The image below shows an air separator (foreground) and filter (background).
They are very simple. They are fit on the flow pipework, this is your water heading out of the boiler to the heating system. The water enters them, as they are wider than the pipework the flow slows down, momentarily allowing air to rise to the top where it is let out through a vent before the water flow speeds up again as it re-enters the pipework to the central heating system.
Why is this not standard for the industry which is selling chemicals to stop corrosion and filters to catch the corrosion the inhibitor is supposed to stop?
Very frustrating.
You can normally retrofit a air separator on to your system and they are standard on any boiler install we do.
Covering Exeter and the surrounding areas, you can contact us today at Lombardi Heating for any advice on this or anything to do with Boiler repairs or installs, central heating work or general plumbing. Get Ben on Call text or Whatsapp - 07766056907
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