Domestic Woes

Posted on 2003/02/12 09:17:50 (February 2003) by john.

A pain in the boiler.

There was a strange knocking sound in my flat last night and this morning. The heating is always noisy, which is very irritating, but this was different. I thought it might be something to do with air in the radiators. I took a look at the boiler and noticed the pressure was right down, so I filled that back up to where it was supposed to be, and dutifully went round and bled all the radiators. For a while I thought I'd fixed it, but then just when I was starting to relax the knocking started again.

It seems to be coming from under the floorboards.

I really hate this sort of thing. I think my frustration comes from the fact that I'm an engineer by trade, albeit in a very different industry. When a system I'm dealing with at work has a problem, I cannot simply ignore it, I need to fix it. I examine the symptoms, diagnose the fault, and start to construct a solution. It can be a bit frustrating at times, and it certainly isn't easy, but at least there are always more options to try and I feel like I know what I'm doing. Heating systems and boilers seem so crapply put together, and I know so little about them, that it is analagous to me trying to write an MPEG decoder whilst drunk and wearing boxing gloves (oh, and handgliding... in the Antartic).

It is baffling that in an age where people can go into space, human beings can be cloned (apparently) and Google can search the equivalent of a billion public libraries in a few seconds, we still can't make a system that will reliably heat a house.

I believe it's called "Water hammering". You can get some stuff to fix it (if yer lucky). The trick is to find the tank which fills the radiator-system (probably in the roof) and put the stuff in there. I think you have to drain the tank and the heating, and then put the powder stuff in the tank and make sure it gets sucked into the radiator system when you re-fill it. Or something. I had a flat with this problem, but (luckily) there was some sort of maintenance-bloke who performed the procedure ... but I do believe that that's what he did. Currently I have a even more annoying problem, which is the creaking and clanking sounds made by the pipes expanding when the system comes on in the morning. There's just about bugger all you can do to avoid *that* sound! By the way, please stop equating everything (i.e. many of your recent rants) to your experiences with software ... it really is a very poor analogy.

Posted by Jimmy at 2003/02/12 13:20:03.

Thanks for the info! I will have to have a word with my landlady about it.
By the way, the pipes underneath your old desk have been going absolutely crazy the last few days... Not sure what is causing that though.

Posted by John at 2003/02/12 14:06:04.

Last Summer I learned the joys of plumbing. The pipe in my room burst and proceeded to flood the hall below. I used Google to find out how to drain my radiators then hired a plumber to install a new pipe the following day. The plumber was a bit crap though. He turned the water back on without closing the radiator valves, thus flooding two more bedrooms and the lounge. I was going to do the job myself because I figured it couldn't be all that hard; especially with the aid of Google. But I doubted myself. Next time, however, I won't. With the aid of Google I will rule the world!

Posted by Rusty at 2003/02/14 15:08:40.

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