Couple of questions about the rad balancing wiki

[Graemevw]

I need to balane our rads but have a couple of questions. Ive read the wiki, and understand, but it says to turn off the HW.

We have a boiler and a cylinder for the HW. I dont quite understand the HW system though, im no plumber. How do i turn the HW off? We have 3 settings on the timer/controler, HW, HW+heating, and off.

Or am i just making sure the heater is off? Am i right in saying the heating pipes run through the HW cylinder, basicaly making the cylinder another rad?


Secondly, we have no rad stats. So i open everything fully and measure drop between feed and return. Then i guess i close all returns but leave the flow valves open and balance the rads by adjusting the return valves?

Thanks.

 

[Graemevw]

Ok, got another question. Our boiler is a glow worm fuel saver MKII.

I thought a quick internet search would tell me what the temp drop should be between flow and returm, but it didnt.

Anyone know?

 

[SimonH2]

If you have a gravity how water system then it can't be turned off - however these have not been fitted for many years.

In a fully pumped system, there will be one or more valves which control flows. If the hot water is turned on, then a lot of the boiler flow will go through the relatively large and short path through the hot water cylinder coil - hence giving a low flow rate through the rads, and so false results.

Thus you need to turn off the hot water (by setting the HW output of the programmer to off) so that all the flow goes through the rads.

 

[D_Hailsham]

We have 3 settings on the timer/controler, HW, HW+heating, and off.

That sound like a pumped CH/gravity HW system to me.

 

[SimonH2]

That sound like a pumped CH/gravity HW system to me.

Or a system that's been upgraded to fully pumped while keeping the old controls.