Run Central heating boiler with radiators drained?

[Batman7070]

Hello, My daughter has moved into a new home and we have had to drain the water from all the CH radiators so as to remove them for decorating. The system programmer is now set to "water on, CH off".

Will it damage the Boiler if it is run with the radiator circuit dry? the domestic water is heating ok but there is a rythmic squeak sound coming from the boiler that sounds like a pump turning dry.

For info the gas boiler is working a pumped primary open vented sytem about 8 years old

[buildersmate]

You clearly must have turned off the lockshield valves on each end of every radiator, then just removed the radiators by loosening the two large nuts that attach them to the pipework? - otherwise ALL of the primary system water would have been removed from the system (because the CH/DHW primary circuit uses common water).
I say this because otherwise your DHW would not still be working and the boiler would have pretty quickly boiled and thumped as soon as you switched on.
Assuming you did the above, there is no harm in running the DHW in this state.
Squeeky pumps prabably means the bearings on them - could be on the blink. Maybe sludge has got shifted around the system in doing this work and has gotten into the pump.

[Batman7070]

Thank you for your reply.

We did initially use the lockshield valves to remove the rads but found that one of them would not close off completely causing a continuous leak (because it was the only rad with a thermostaically controlled valve). It was then that we decided to shut off the water to the CH header tank and drain all the water from the radiator circuit.

The boiler is installed in the garage so we cant be sure if it boiled or shut down at the time. Come to think of it the squeaky bearing sound stopped after about half an hour but the boiler was making some strange noises.

We have not yet been able to get back to the house to check if is all ok this morning.

Thank you for your help.

[gucciman]

if you've drained the whole system then no you cannot use the boiler for hot water and you may well have caused some damage to the boiler by running it dry, lets hope the over heat stat kicked in first to save it.

you would have been better off just removing one radiator for decorating at a time.

if your removing a rad with a trv for decorating then you really should lock down the valve with a decorators blanking cap that the valves are sold with (everyone loses them)