Are you wondering why your house isn’t getting warm enough?

Perhaps you’ve only just moved in, and you’re not finding the house (or certain rooms in the house) as comfortable or warm as in your previous home. Or maybe you’ve noticed your radiators seem less effective than they used to be, and your home just isn’t getting as warm anymore.

Here are a few reasons why…

• If your radiators are not getting hot enough it could be that they are full of sludge, the older your central heating system is, the more likely it is you have sludge in your radiators A good way to tell this is by seeing if they’re only warm at the top, this would mean that the radiators are only working at half power, which will mean that your house is not getting as warm as it could do. Blocked radiators make your bills higher, as your heating has to work harder to warm your home. Sludge can also damage your boiler, heat pump and valves.
• If you think you have sludge blocking your radiators, get a Gas Safe registered engineer to have a look. If you need a power flush, the engineer will connect a machine to your system. This will push a powerful, low pressure flow of liquid through your system. This dislodges sludge and rust, removing it from your radiators and boiler. It can take several hours to flush out your radiator system. It can take even longer if you have a larger system or there’s a lot of sludge. Your central heating system will contain fresh, clean water after the power flush. The engineer will probably add an inhibitor solution. This liquid chemical will stop sludge building up again.
• Your boiler could be undersized and not have the capacity to heat your home, this is quite a common thing especially in newer homes.
• Another common issue is that there could be a problem with your boiler’s thermostat, or room thermostat. It could be opening or closing too early, and simply not detecting the correct temperature it needs to be.
• You could also have a faulty pump or motorised valve, which is only opening partially. Or, although your pump looks like it’s working, it’s not pumping at the correct speed, therefore the heat is not getting to your radiators.
• Just like sludge can block up radiators, it can also block or restrict your pipework. If sludge is getting into your manifolds or valves, the flow of hot water to your radiators will be restricted, by adding an inhibitor this could help decrease the amount of sludge.

If you’re still not sure what could be causing the problem, please get in touch and we can send out a specialised Heating Engineer.