Sludge Flakes: help us get rid of ours, please

[ToughButterCup]

I recon we have a case of sludge flake - and this isn't the breakfast cereal type of flake either. Help us sort it out, please.

 

We've drained the system down twice now, and radiator performance is at best patchy. So next weekend, we're determined to 

• Drain down
• Take the rads off and flush them
• and do our best to flush the 'tubes'.... and that's where we'd like some help

 

When the system is heated by the fire, and the pump is circulating hot water, you can feel the change (drop) in temperature where the wider pipe meets the narrow one. We can hear little pairs of castanets rattling in the pipe (together with entrained  air from a leaky valve).

 

Once you take the rads off and clean them out, how do you clean out the small bore pipe?

 

 

 

[Jeremy Harris]

Have you tried just flushing the system out with a hose?  On our old house system this was easy, as both the flow and return drains were two standard drain bibs that poked out through the wall under the kitchen window, right next to our outside tap.

 

If you have the means to do this, then it's worth a try:  

 

I flushed all the mixed inhibitor that was causing problems out of our system by just opening both drain bibs, letting the system drain right down (making sure everything was turned off) and then connecting the hose to one of the drain bib outlets with a hose clamp, and turning the outside tap on.  It was pretty vigorous, and flushed clean water right around the system and back out the other drain bib.  I had to turn the outside tap down a bit, as our water pressure is pretty high (around 5 bar), but even so I was able to not only flush all the old mixed inhibitor out, but also flushed a fair bit of sludge from the rads, as the water draining out turned pretty thick and black.  I left it running until the water coming out was running clean, then turned off the tap, disconnected the hose, drained the system right down again and then closed the drain bibs and refilled the system with clean water and fresh inhibitor.

[Roger440]

Hmmm, jut been through this at my old place (with some guidance from Nick) Sadly i was unsuccesful, but what JSHarris  said, with flushing it may work.

 

Did it work before?