Plate heat exchangers, as fitted to most modern combination boilers, are extremely efficient and compact, allowing ever smaller boilers to be produced.
However, relatively small quantities of iron oxide (rust) can block the waterways, causing the boiler to cut out when in hot water mode. As little as 12gm of rust can cause a heat exchanger to fail. A central heating system may contain several kg's of loose rust, and therefore failures are common.
Once this situation arises, it is necessary to power flush the primary water (central heating) side of a heat exchanger to remove the sludge and iron oxides. However, the internal design of such boilers means that it is not possible to do so without first removing it from the boiler.
If a plate heat exchanger has BSP threaded connections it is easy to attach the flow and return hoses of a power flushing pump, once removed from the boiler.
However, many plate heat exchangers have plain punched hole water inlets / outlets with no BSP threaded connections, and in these cases special adaptors are needed to connect a power flushing pump.
Purpose made manifolds are available from Kamco to connect hoses of a power flushing pump onto most heat exchangers of this type.
There are many different proprietary designs of plate heat exchangers and it is not possible for Kamco to be aware of every variation currently on the market, hence the adaptors supplied by Kamco will fit most plate heat exchangers, but cannot be guaranteed to fit all.
