Radiators are vital for heating homes during the colder months, so they must function efficiently.
With one of my radiators failing to heat up properly, I thought I would have to call an engineer to get it fixed.
However, after looking at the British Gas website, I found that the issue could be that there is trapped air in the system.
This is when air essentially becomes trapped inside the radiator and blocks the flow of water, causing the radiator to feel cold or only partially warm.
Bleeding the radiator can help release this trapped air, allowing the flow of water to resume and the radiator to heat up efficiently.
Initially, I thought that bleeding the radiator would be a long and complicated task, despite reading online how simple it was. However, I was surprised at just how quick and easy it was.
Before beginning, I switched off the boiler and lowered the heat setting to avoid the risk of scalding.
The next step was to locate the bleed valve – this was on the top of my radiator. It looks like a small, round vent with a square nut in the centre.
With a towel at the ready and a radiator key (a special key used for bleeding radiators), I slowly inserted the key into the bleed valve, turning it anti-clockwise to allow the trapped air to escape.
At this point, I heard a hissing sound that carried on for quite a while. This was because my radiators hadn’t been bled in a long time.
After the hissing sound stopped, water began to leak from the valve – at this point, I immediately closed the valve by turning the radiator key clockwise.
With the radiator bled, it was time to turn my boiler back on and check on the pressure.
I noticed the boiler pressure dropped below one bar after bleeding the radiator, so I needed to increase the pressure.
On your boiler, you ideally want the pressure to sit at one to two bars.
To increase the pressure on my combi boiler, I opened both valves to allow cold water to enter the system, keeping an eye on the pressure gauge. I then closed both valves when the pressure gauge reached 1.5 bars.
This process took me just three minutes and resulted in a hotter radiator that now heats up faster.
