Central heating inhibitor: tricks of the trade

You’ve heard me multiple times talking about radiator sludge – the mixture of rust and dirt that gathers at the bottom of your radiators, stopping your radiators from heating fully and potentially damaging your boiler.

The good news is you can prevent it with central heating inhibitor, keeping your boiler and central heating system sludge-free and potentially saving yourself hundreds or thousands of sponduliks to fix a preventable problem.

What is central heating inhibitor?

Simply put, central heating inhibitor Inhibits the amount of reaction between the central heating water and certain metal components within the system, namely steel and iron.

Ideally you should team an inhibitor up with a magnetic filter which catches the sludge moving around your central heating system. If you’re inhibitor is doing it’s job properly and the system is dosed correctly, you should get minimal sludge build up and a more efficient system. Typically, the magnetic filter is emptied and cleaned with your annual boiler service, keeping your system cleaner than Big G’s whiskers, year after year.

Central heating inhibitor + magnetic filter = a team with more wins that Manchester City!

Watch me install and review the Magnaclean Magnetic Filter here:

How to add central heating inhibitor to your system

There are different ways to add central heating inhibitor, depending on what kind of central heating system you have. I’ve created two videos: one that works across all heating systems, the other that’s for pressurised systems only.

What you’ll see in the videos are some simple tricks to add the inhibitor without radiator leaks or inhibitor waterfalls – you don’t want those, they’re messy! Just get prepared, take your time going through all the steps in the right order and you’ll be fine.

Don’t miss the Blue Peter moment with a 15mm fitting and flexible tap connector in this video – my truly patented tip* for adding inhibitor to all types of heating systems, including combi systems, sealed systems and gravity fed systems. This one involves emptying some water out of the bottom radiator before replacing it with inhibitor at the top. You can also do this via the Magnaclean – isolate it, drain water out of the bottom and add inhibitor to the top! Simples!

In this video for adding inhibitor to a pressurised heating system, you first need to depressurise via the expansion vessel before pumping inhibitor into the system.

*ok, maybe it’s not patented