Over time, water in heating systems can accumulate harmful dirt and debris. Solder fragments discarded by older radiators and boilers can build up and start to cause harm to your heating system. Sludge (or ferrous magnetite) is a natural by-product of all the heating and cooling that goes on and can form viscous and solid deposits. Also, particularly in hard water areas, limescale can build up and cause blockages in the radiators, which can lead to unwanted system noise and damage to important components in your heating appliances.
There are simple solutions you can adopt to maintain good water quality and therefore system quality. In this post, we’ll go over why water quality is important, and what measures you can take to make sure that the water in your system is clean and of the optimum quality to ensure it’s efficiency and prolonged lifespan.
Why is water quality important?
Your boiler is supposed to run with clean water in the system – pipework, radiators etc. If not, it won’t work properly and could break down, leaving you without heat over the next few months. Even if the water in your system started out clean, over the years, the water could become contaminated, causing blockages in your pipework and radiators.
Apart from potentially costing you hundreds of pounds in boiler repairs, it will reduce the overall efficiency of your system, causing your radiators to have cold spots even though your boiler is working. Your radiators will be poor convectors of heat, which in turn means wasted energy from your boiler and of course, higher bills than necessary – without the comfort of a warm home.
For this reason, when installing a new boiler, it’s important you think about cleaning your heating system to make sure the water quality is at optimum levels before the new installation. But also, consider how you will maintain that water quality over time, so that the life of your system is prolonged and it works – producing the heat you need, without costing you more than it should.