How to power flush central heating system

if you have bought a power flashing machine but are unsure how to use it well this video is for you as i'll show you step-by-step guide on how to use paraflashing machines what does a power flashing machine do it circulates water in your system at very high flow rates with cleaning chemicals which allows you to pick up debris and flush out uh any debris in your system both magnetic and non-magnetic apart for using power flushing machines there are other other techniques of cleaning central heating systems you can do what is called a main splash or a chemical flush or some people use what's called a magna cleanse two magnetic filters my opinion is that power flashing machines are way more superior to magna clans or to main splash and there's a reason behind it the higher the velocity of water in your system especially in radiators the more debris will be able to pick up and to give you an idea those machines are rated up to 150 liters of flow a minute and if you use your mains quite often you only have 10 12 liters available a minute maybe maybe 20 if you're lucky however if you put mains water or magna cleanse through your central heating system the resistance of your central heating system piper and your boiler quite often means that at the other end of the system you're not even getting 10 liters per minute to give you an idea if the system has 100 liters of water for example this machine can change the whole water in that system within a minute you try to do that with mains flash or magna cleanse you'll need probably 10 maybe 20 minutes to do that so not only will that slow the cleaning process as well the velocity of water in your system will be much slower and you'll be picking up much less debris than if you were to use the power flushing machine so let's have a look at this machine and i will explain exactly how it operates so at the front of the machine we've got this valve that moves from the right to left it reverses the flow so if it's in this position the machine will push water through here to the system if i reverse it it's going to push water through here to the system and by quickly changing the direction of this valve we're gonna change the direction of water in the system creating turbulence picking up more debris those two valves have three positions if they point down this means the machine is recirculating water through the system so right now it's pushing through this valve down and it's coming to the machine from the system dirty water through here those valves have also up positions and when you put them in up positions they dump water however to damp water from the system you have to have this valve pointing down because that's where the machine is pushing water to the system and this valve pointing up and this is taking the water out through this hose to the back and it dumps it to the drains so this is recirculating this is damping water obviously you can dump water in the other direction as well but then you have to put reversible or flow valve into this direction push water through the system through here and then damp water with that valve again it goes through here through the this hose to the damp hose on the back and it also have position off so now the valves are enough position nothing happens if i put this valve in this direction it's gonna push water into the system but on this side the valve is shut so what's gonna happen now the machine will be building up pressure in the system and it's very useful if you have to fire the boiler if the pressures which don't make because the pressure in the system is below 0.5 bar what you can do you can close this valve build the pressure up fire the boiler and then slowly adjust how much you want to open that valve to maintain the pressure in the system and this orange thing here on top this is a valve that you use to turn the mains on to fill the machine with clean water on the back of the machine we've got four connections inlet for our mains water usually connected from a garden hose or a washing machine outlet this is damp hose that goes to the drains that's where we dumping our dirty water from the system and this is supply and return supply and return or we can call it flow and return hoses depending how you set your reversible flow valve on the front and when damping water you really only have two positions the direction of flow needs to go to the valve that points down and the other valve has to point out or the reverse the valve points this way the water goes into the system through this valve and comes out through here if you do it this way nothing will happen because you're pushing against a closed valve this setup doesn't work this works this works this doesn't work this doesn't work and obviously if both valves are down this works and this works in the machine you also get this box and it's a set of hoses to make all your connections for flow return damp hose and they are temperature rated hoses they look like that a box of different adapters connectors that i accumulated over the years to adapt to different systems filter adapters another filter adapter that's for furnox i've made up a lot of my own adapters for pipework loads of them here and a rubber mallet to wack radiators that's a ph tester for testing water how do we connect our power flashing machine to power flush the system there was a bit of a confusion on my previous videos because someone said you can't connect to flow pipe only or you can't connect the return pipe only what you have to understand is you can connect pretty much anywhere you can take a radiator off and connect to the valves on the radiator you can cut into flow pipe and connect your return and flow from the machine here or you can cut into the return pipe work or in our case we've got a filter which is the easiest option we're going to remove the magna clean and connect to magna clean valves the machine cuts into the system and where the machine pushes water its flow now and where the washer comes back to the machine that's your return now so it's not the boiler dictating flow and return anymore so we can cut pretty much anywhere on the system if you were cleaning an open vent system the system that has a header tank in the loft you have to do two things you have to isolate this feed to the system from the header tank and you have to cup off temporarily your safety vent otherwise if you don't do that the machine will push the water through the header tank and will flood your property through the loft as you can see the system is quite dirty just hunt tight now i'm taking my flow hose so this is my new flow that's my return and the valve on the other side is pointing that direction we're gonna be pushing water to the boiler through the return and then the water will be coming back when recirculating through this return hose which initially we will not be using so that is my flow and return now connected there's two more hoses i have to connect obviously mains water inlet and my damp hose normally you put them in the drains for two reasons i will connect it to the utility sink first reason i want to show you how the water looks when we flush and the second reason this kitchen this utility is being replaced anyway we don't have to be super precious about those things now i'm gonna connect my uh outlet hose now i'm gonna use my tool box to weigh it down so it doesn't run away one more connection to do which is mains water i'm gonna just use short washing machine hose so one end goes to washing machine valve under the sink the other one goes to the machine that's my flow and return to the machine connected and connected to the filter connections i also have the reversible flow valve pointing in the correct direction so that will push water from the machine to the boiler and initially we're gonna be dumping all the water so the theory is all the radiators open if there's any bypass on the system needs to be fully closed and we are pumping clean water through the boiler into the system and we're dumping the water before it comes back to the machine so no dirty water goes through the boiler obviously you have to plug it in as well to the power socket but it's on if i press the button there is noise we're pushing water again through this valve and we're going to be damping this way that's our mains water connection if i open it you can hear water going into the machine and we are only flashing in this instance through all the radiators pushing clean water through the system dumping dirty water on the other side we should have water coming out on the other end here in a second and as you can see the system is filthy and we haven't put the chemicals in yet so the procedure now is i'll have to keep pushing clean water to the system and wait till the water on the other side runs clean a little longer than a few minutes later now that water runs relatively clean it's time to put this valve to recirculate and i'm gonna put chemicals that's what i'm using it's a really strong cleaning chemical you can only use it on boilers that do not have an aluminium heat exchanger intergas has aluminium on gas side but it's copper on water side so it's safe to use this power flashing liquid but never use it on boilers like worcester bosch or logic you'll destroy the heat exchanger if you use that use x 800 on dirty systems instead or or f5 so fx2 is excellent but you have to be careful with it and it also needs to be neutralized and water needs to be tested later on for ph levels i don't want to put too much of this stuff it really is strong now i'm going to turn the machine on turn the boiler on and turn the heating on but i'm going to set the boiler to 40 degrees only now the boiler's on the first flashing machine is on and as i said i'm only setting it to about 40 degrees some people flush at 50 degrees i find 40 degrees is plenty although the machine itself is rated to 75 degrees i've heard of instances of hoses bursting when the water was getting too hot so be careful how hot you get your system now i'm gonna walk around the property and check make sure non-radiators are leaking i don't get any problems i still have all the radiators open and i will circulate hot water with chemicals for an hour around the property once all the radiators get warm you can turn the boiler off and you can start changing the flow change a few times one hour later i've turned the boiler off the water has been circulating for around an hour now but what you do after an hour you turn all the radiators apart for one and then circulate water just through one radiator for around five minutes changing the flow a few times as well and you will be able to hear crazy amounts of water going through that radiators you want to create turbulence by moving this valve on and off on and off i'm gonna turn all the rocks apart for one off now and i'll show you what kind of flow goes through that radiator as the full flow of the machine going through only one radiator right now what i'm gonna now set my timer running for five minutes reversing the flow to three times then close this radiator go to the next radiator and next radiator i'm not dumping any water i'm still circulating water with chemicals through every single radiators so what has just happened here i was flashing through this radiator only and i noticed that the valve was leaking from the top and quite often you can just tighten the top of the valve to stop the leak the blooming thing snapped inside causing massive leak now i didn't have time to drain the system nor did i want to do it because i didn't want to waste all the chemicals in the radiators so what i did i stopped the power flashing machine i put all the valves for recirculation or left them in place that drop the pressure in the system and all i had to deal with was the water in this radiator and a bit of water in the pipe work so i took the wet back and quickly changed the valve once you've done all the radiators one by one flushing through them you leave the last wood radiator open go to your machine open the damp valve opposite to the direction of flow so we're pushing water that way and we damping water here we're gonna turn the machine back on and open the field valve introduce clean water back to the system to flush all the chemicals out from the last radiator while we do that while we flush those radiators we can take a rubber mallet and knock radiators to help dislodge more there so i'm gonna keep flashing through this last radiator until i've got a clean water in the outlet hose once the water runs clean i will move to another radiator as you can see the water is mighty dirty and you will also notice that the first radiator takes the longest time to clear out because it also clears whole flow and return pipe work at the same time first radiator water runs clear so i can turn that radiator off and you'll see as soon as i turn another radiator the water will get dirty again that's radiator number three treaty dirty as well and you carry on like that until you get to the last radiator once you've got all the radiators uh cleared out and there's clean water coming from every single radiator it's time to open all the radiators and this step is only to be done if using acidic cleaners you have to neutralize the system you can use neutralizing powder as this one from camko or neutralizing liquid i went around now and turn all the radiators on i'm gonna set it back to recirculate so it's gonna circulate water through the system without dumping any water anymore i'm gonna put neutralizing crystals into the machine make sure my water levels are okay and turn it on once you turn it on you circulate it through the radiators for a few minutes 10-15 minutes and as soon as you get circulation through all the radiators you reverse flow a few times you dump all that alkaline water and you have to test the water at the outlet with either a ph meter or testing papers once you've circulated water for let's say 15 minutes 20 minutes maybe and you confirmed you have circulation on all the radiators by turning the boiler on central heating for a while it's time to start dumping that water and we're going to be testing ph levels of that water using ph testing papers the way i do it you take a bit of paper tear it off test it on mains water put it aside and then try to match the same color with my outlet coming from the hose but i will probably start flushing it for about 10 minutes so dumping water for 10 minutes before i even attempt testing because i know it's gonna be alkaline i do it with all the radiators on now there's no need to go radiator by radiator individually now you can leave the whole central heating turned on provided by circulation through all the radiators once the water starts running clear from our outlet from the system you have to test for two things dissolved solids in water you can use a tds meter total dissolved solids i don't have one i never needed one or you can use turpedit tube if i pronounce it correctly it's a glass cube that you put water in and you look down on it and you see how dirty the water is or you can do what i do and make one from two water bottles so in the right hand side i've got a tap water from here you look from the top of it and in the other one i've got a system water and i compare them when they start to look similar looking from the top i know the system is clean that would be the power flush completed all that's left to do is to put the filter back on the system and put some inhibitors what's left to do now is to pressurize the system go around the property bleed all the radiators turn central heating on and make sure we've got circulation everywhere if you're interested in the video where i install this boiler how i change a vented system into combi system i'm gonna post a link to that video here so you can watch it now as well if you want to know how to fully commission an intergas boiler i'm gonna post another link to that video right here thank you for watching and two more videos for you here

Channel: Urban Plumbers

Views: 79,238

Keywords: how to power flush, how to power flush central heating, how to power flush a radiator, how to power flush a combi boiler, how to power flush a central heating system, how to power flush open vented system, how to pwoer flush a radiator, how to pwoer flush central heating, how to pwoer flush a combi boiler, how to power flush a central heating sytem, how to pwoer flush open vented system, How to power flush open vented sytem

Id: DQ5kP0JZ4ZM

Length: 16min 41sec (1001 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 24 2021