Increase and Manage the Pressure in Your Combination Boiler
Everyone that’s lived with a conventional boiler in there home knows that it’s pretty automatic. It works off a timer and the Feed and Expansion Tank In the loft pretty much keeps the water level, as it should be. However combination boilers are very different and many people do not know how to top up the water within the central heating system. It’s a task that every combination boiler owner should know how to do without the need to call a plumber. After all it only takes 2 minutes and a call out charge for 2 minutes work can leave you feeling a little short changed.
Steps
- Understand how they work. Combination boilers work on what’s known as sealed central heating systems. Meaning they are completely free of Tanks, and natural air supply. This is essential not least because if a mains water holding component within that boiler became defective and thus enters the Heating side of the boiler there would be potential for all sorts of problems with floods in the loft area and much more. There are many advantages of sealed central heating systems. So we need to manually regulate the amount of water actually circulating your radiators. And this is achieved through a filling loop, usually located close to the combination boiler.
- Identify the filling loop, the pressure gauge and the boiler.
- Practice switching the boiler controls to off before attempting to top up the pressure.
- Make sure the pressure gauge can be monitored whilst accessing the filling loop. The biggest mistake that can be made is over pressurizing the boiler; this is usually caused by not monitoring the gauge as you increase the pressure. If this is not achievable then ask for a friend or family member to assist by looking at the gauge as you take care of the filling loop.
- The ideal pressure for any sealed system is 1.5bar (displayed on the pressure gauge).
- The filling loop will have a silver flexible tube with two handles on each side of it. When the handles are in the off position they will be across the flow of the pipe. You will need to slowly turn them so that they straighten up in line with the pipe.
- By now you should hear the water flowing through into the boiler.
- Keep an eye on the pressure gauge as it slowly creeps up to the green area or the 1.5 bar marker. Anywhere between 1 bar and 2.2 bar is fine.
- Turn the handles back into the original position.
Tips
- Get your Local Heating engineer to pressurise the boiler whilst having your boiler serviced.
