Oil heating not heating hot water tank

C

colin79ie

Registered User
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370
Hi,

If i have our oil central heating on, the radiators get hot, almost too hot to touch, but there is never enough water in the hot tank to have a shower, even if the heating is on for a few hours. There is some hot water, but we would have to turn on the immersion heater in order to have a decent shower. Our tank is a standard size copper tank etc..

This is not an ideal situation for the pocket..
 
No, it's not recent. It's been going on more or less since it was fitted. Just fed up with it.
 
I'm far from an expert but it sounds like there might be a blockage preventing proper flow into the cylinder especially if the rads are so hot - could be an easy fix for a competent plumber.
 
Look at your cylinder. you will see four pipes that connect to it. One off the top and one that goes into the very bottom. At the opposite side of the bottom entering pipe, you should see two pipes that enter the cylinder about 18" apart and parallel. On the bottom paralled pipe will be a red wheeled valve, make sure it is open.(turn anti clockwise). If you open it, when heating is on these two pipes should heat.

is your heating zoned? I.E can you have hot water only or radiators only?
 
I don't think the house is zoned. I'm no expert. The only valves that the plumber told me about were the ones in our utility which go upstairs. He said closing one of the valves would isolate the rads upstairs, if we were not using the upstairs for any reason. Both these valves are open.

I will check the valve at the tank as suggested.

Before opening this, would there be any reason why it would not be fully open, other than the plumber not opening it fully by mistake?

I don't want to tamper with the plumbing gods!!
 
It is used for balancing the system, it should be half open (roughly). you will not do any harm by opening it.

In my experiance, when someone needs to turn the water off, every valve in the hot press gets turned off, since this valve doesn't effect the water flow from taps, it is often forgotten about and not re-opened.
 
Ook, I checked the pipes. No valves on these. They were both hot when the heating was on. Might it be a problem with the tank itself? It is insulated with a lagging jacket. There are lots of old clothes/duvets etc in the hotpress as well, which I think would add to the insulation effect.
 
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