[KellyMP]

I bleed my radiators last year and the pressure when cold dropped to 0, been using it throughout the year with no problems but just found out how to repressurise it which i've just done when i turned the heating off tonight.

Anyone know what kind of a difference this will make or what low pressure actually does? cause all my heaters have been working fine for the last year, i thought they were heating up pretty quickly anyway.

[KimLinbert]

I bleed my radiators last year and the pressure when cold dropped to 0, been using it throughout the year with no problems but just found out how to repressurise it which i've just done when i turned the heating off tonight.

Anyone know what kind of a difference this will make or what low pressure actually does? cause all my heaters have been working fine for the last year, i thought they were heating up pretty quickly anyway.

I've been living in my apartment for almost 3 years now and it's got the old-fashioned radiators, and I didn't even know you could bleed pressure at all, so I would be interested in this as well. Never had any problems though.

[chelviweeme]

We have a "wet" system at home (gas boiler with water piping and radiators).

A few points the bear in mind:

1) The pressure as reported by your boiler will of course be higher when the heating is running compared to when its not.

2) If the system is running below the recommend pressure level, you run the risk of the boiler's pump pumping air instead of water, which is bad for its health and the pump motor.

3) As I understand it from our boiler guy, at lower pressure you also run more of a risk moving around any crap that might be in the pipes.

4) In addition to the bleed-value of each radiator, you should also have a bleed value ontop of the boiler itself.

5) If you are loosing pressure rapidly (within 1 week) that would suggest a leak in your pipework somewhere. Over longer periods of time its normal that you'll need to occasionally top the system up, as some water will be lost even without leaks.

6) When checking the pressure on the system and bleeding any radiators, always make sure that all the radiators are fully open, and none are closed off - otherwise when you open those radiators later the pressure will drop.

We had a busted pipe in our system last year - the pressure would go from 2bar to 0 in the space of about 30mins. Turns out the busted pipe was under our poured-concrete kitchen floor, so they isolated that section of pipe and re-plumbed the affected radiators above ground.