Heating & hot water
Powerflushing, balancing, radiators, cylinders and controls. The work people are often told needs a new boiler when it doesn’t.
Diagnosis
A boiler that fires and a house that never warms up are two different problems. Replacing the first does not fix the second, and plenty of people find that out the expensive way.
Black magnetic debris collecting in radiator bottoms and pipework. Flush it, then fit a filter so it does not simply come back over the next two winters.
Setting the lockshields so the far end of the house gets its share. A couple of hours of work, no parts, and it fixes more cold rooms than anything else we do.
Zone valves and a sensible programmer instead of one thermostat in a draughty hallway deciding the temperature of an entire house.
Usually balancing or sludge, and usually not a new boiler. Ring and we will tell you which.
Hot water
If the shower drops to a dribble when the kitchen tap runs, no amount of boiler replacement will fix it. That is a stored hot water question, not a boiler one.
Radiators
FAQs
Sludge. Magnetic debris settles in the bottom of the radiator and the hot water flows over the top of it. Cold at the top with a warm bottom is trapped air instead, which bleeding fixes in a minute.
Balancing, usually. Radiators nearest the pump take the flow first unless the lockshield valves are set to share it out. On Sheffield’s taller stone houses the top floor is furthest away and suffers first.
Pumps a cleaning solution round the system at pressure to shift the sludge out of radiators and pipework, then refills with inhibitor. You need it if radiators are cold at the bottom, bleed water runs black or the boiler keeps cutting out. You do not need one just because it was on a boiler quote — ask to see the system water.
Yes. With a suspended floor it is usually straightforward. Solid floors mean either running in the wall or accepting surface pipework, and we will be upfront about which before starting.
Yes, and they suit a lot of the older property here. The things to check are the filled weight against the floor and fixings, and whether the valves and tails match. Restored ones need the same checks as new.
If you have two or more bathrooms in regular use, very likely. Stored hot water lets several outlets run together. It costs more and takes space, but it is the only thing that fixes a shower that dies when someone runs a tap downstairs.
Yes. One thermostat in a hallway controlling a three storey house satisfies nobody. Zone valves and proper controls let you heat the parts of the house you are actually using.
Get in touch
Ring and a Gas Safe registered engineer answers, not a script. Rather write it down? The form comes straight through and we come back the same day.
Ring us, any hour
0114 463 0405No heat, no hot water or a boiler locked out — ring rather than email.
No obligation. We’ll tell you straight whether it’s a repair or a replacement.