Radiator and heating repairs in Totterdown

Heating problems we fix

• Radiator cold at the top, warm at the bottom. Usually trapped air. It needs bleeding.
• Radiator cold at the bottom, warm at the top. Often sludge building up inside.
• One radiator stays cold. Could be a stuck valve, a closed lockshield or a balancing problem.
• Leaking valves or radiators. Worn glands, loose fittings or corroded radiators.
• System losing pressure. Usually a leak somewhere in the pipework, radiators or valves.
• Noisy pipes. Banging, gurgling or ticking from heating pipes.

What we can do

• Bleeding and balancing radiators
• Replacing radiator valves, including thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs)
• Fitting new or replacement radiators
• Moving radiators to a different wall
• Finding and fixing leaks in heating pipework
• Draining down and refilling systems

How to bleed a radiator

1. Turn the heating off and let the radiators cool.
2. Hold a cloth under the bleed valve at the top corner of the radiator.
3. Turn the bleed key anticlockwise about a quarter turn. You will hear air hiss out.
4. Close it as soon as water appears.
5. Check your boiler pressure gauge. If it has dropped, it may need topping up. Your boiler manual explains how.

If radiators need bleeding often, air is getting in somewhere, and that is worth looking at.

Older homes and heating

In Totterdown terraces, central heating was usually added long after the houses were built, and often extended in stages. That can mean long pipe runs, radiators on different pipe sizes and systems that are hard to balance. We will look at how your system is laid out before suggesting changes.