Boiler Repair, Service & Installation in Brockley (SE4)

The 2021 Census counted 11,147 households in SE4, and 80.1% of them heat with mains gas alone, above the 74.0% for England. 27.2% live in a house that has been converted or shared, and 30.3% in a terrace. The Valuation Office puts 44.9% of the district’s properties before 1900 and 11.4% between 1900 and 1918. Houses that old were not built with central heating, so every radiator, pipe and valve in them has been fitted since, often in more than one round.

A slow weep from a valve is easy to ignore.

Weeping radiator valves

A radiator valve can leak in two places, and they are different jobs. The first is the spindle, where the head or cap turns: a gland nut there packs round it, and on an older valve that packing dries out, so water creeps out each time the heating runs and leaves a brown crust or a green stain on the valve body. Sometimes a quarter turn on the gland nut stops it; sometimes the packing has gone. The second place is the tail, the short threaded piece that joins the valve to the radiator, and the compression joint where the valve meets the pipe from the floor. A tail can weep after a radiator has been taken off and refitted, and an old compression joint can let go once the pipe has been knocked during building work or a new floor. Leave either for long and the drip marks a carpet, softens a floorboard or, in a conversion, finds its way into the flat below. On a sealed system it also lets the pressure down, slowly, until the boiler stops. And on a very old valve the body itself can be corroded through, when no amount of tightening will hold it.

Changing a valve means stopping the water at that point. On a sealed system that usually means draining the system down, or part of it, then refilling and bleeding afterwards. On some runs the pipe can be frozen either side of the valve with a freezing kit instead, so the rest of the house stays full. Either way, the seized old valve comes out, a new one goes in, the tail is remade, and the pressure and air are checked before we leave.

Towels round a valve are a sign, not a fix.

If several valves are weeping, the system is probably due a wider look, and it is worth asking whether the radiators themselves are sound before new valves go on old ones. We will tell you which is the better use of the money.

If the radiators are as old as the valves and the boiler is too, we also arrange boiler installations, so a refit can be planned in one go rather than piecemeal.