by Nick Jolliffe | Sep 18, 2026 | Heating
If your boiler keeps losing pressure, the single most useful thing you can work out before anything else is how fast it falls. A system that drifts down over several months and a system that needs topping up every few days are two different faults with two different...
by Nick Jolliffe | Sep 18, 2026 | Heating
The taps run hot and the radiators are stone cold. That combination is useful, because it rules out a lot straight away: the boiler is firing, the gas is on, there is water in the system and the electricity supply is fine. Something is stopping the heat reaching the...
by Nick Jolliffe | Sep 18, 2026 | Heating
Almost every guide on how to balance radiators opens at step one, which is turning the heating off. This one opens a step earlier, because balancing is the wrong job for a good proportion of the people who go looking for it, and there is no point following eight...
by Nick Jolliffe | Sep 18, 2026 | Heating
Radiators hot at the top and cold at the bottom have magnetite sludge lying across the floor of the panel, and bleeding will not shift a gram of it. The cold band is iron oxide silt sitting in the lower waterway, hot water is running over the top of it, and there is...
by Nick Jolliffe | Sep 18, 2026 | Plumbing
Here is how to descale a kettle, before anything else. Fill it to about half with a 50/50 mix of white vinegar and water, or with a litre of water and a heaped tablespoon of citric acid powder. Boil it, switch it off, and leave it to stand for thirty minutes to an...
