Bleeding Radiators – How To Self Help Guide
Bleeding Radiators is a very simple but effective way to ensure your central heating is running to its full potential. You know when you need to bleed your radiators when you hear your system make a strange banging noise, or your feel cold spots on your radiators this is are an indicator of trapped air, one of the main indicators is your system does not heat up sufficiently so you’ll need to bleed any radiators, so how do you achieve this?
Time: This should take 20 to 60 seconds to bleed each radiator, depending on the size of the radiator.
Equipment needed:
One radiator key (these can be bought from any hardware shop for very little money)
One cloth to catch the water.
Note: Turn off your system so that the water is cool in the system.
How To Bleed a Radiator
Just follow these simple steps to achieve this:
- Feel your radiators and find the cold spots
- Turn off your system so you do not burn yourself.
- With your radiator key in hand place a cloth under the key and insert the key into the radiator valve and turn the key anti-clockwise ( these are allocated at the end of each radiator)
- Listen for a hissing noise as the air escapes and once water emerges and the hissing stops you can turn the key anti-clockwise and remove the key.
- Repeat this instruction on all your radiators to remove all trapped air from the system.
- Restart your heating system, you should find that the radiator will now be hot. If you have a combi boiler or sealed system, you may need to re-pressurise your boiler. Take a look at this repressuring a boiler here
Once you’ve finished, check the boiler pressure gauge. Bleeding lowers the system pressure, so if it’s below 1 bar, follow our guide on how to repressurise a boiler. If the radiator is still cold at the bottom rather than the top, it’s sludge, not air, so see our guide to a radiator cold at the bottom. And if one radiator stays cold after bleeding, our guide to one radiator not working covers stuck valves and other causes.
If your boiler is over 8 years old, it’s usually less efficient and more prone to faults, so it may be time for a boiler replacement. If so, we would be very happy to help you get an accurate quotation to suit your requirements. Get a Free Quotation
