Advice needed re: Radiator Valves

[DIY_Dean]

Hi

I'm replacing a radiator in an upstairs bathroom. There is not currently a thermostat / valve to regulate flow on it at all, just identical 'lockshield valves' with plastic caps on each end. This means the temparature/flow cannot be changed like on my other radiators.

Is there a reason for this? Does one radiator in the house have to be like this or was it just a lazy plumber who installed it?

Thanks

 

[gas4you]

Years ago the bathroom radiator was used as a heat sink ie to take excess heat out ofthe boiler. This was needed more with solid fuel boilers as they could not be instantly controlled by a boiler stat. Quite often when boilers have been changed this has been left as is. You can tell this if the rad gets hot when boiler just on for water. Today's regulations state that you must have 1 rad without a TRV in the room where the room thermostat is, obviously not the bathroom. So to sum up this is just being used in some way as a system bypass, somewhere for the pump to keep pumping if all the other trv's shut at the same time.

 

[DIY_Dean]

Gas4you, Thanks for your speedy reply - much appreciated.

As it is a towel rail I'm fitting, I've been looking at suitable valves. However, almost all of them I have seen are 15mm, whereas the pipes to my existing radiator are 10mm.

Do I need to find (apparently rare) 10mm valves or is there such a thing as a 10mm-to-15mm coupler I could use to join the pipework? The pipework needs to be extended a bit anyway, so I could make the join below the floorboard to make the job neater. Also, I'm not wanting to do any soldering, so is it permissable to use push-fit or compression fittings for this purpose?

Thanks in advance

Dean