Hi Folks,
We moved into a house 18 months ago. It was built in 2007 and has a 2007 Potterton Powermax HE boiler. Eleven radiators in the house, various sizes.
Against our better judgement, we took my mother's advice and turned off the radiators in two unused bedrooms, to prevent heating up unused rooms. After reading advice on forums, I'll never turn one completely off again (except for removal). Lesson learnt.
We put them back on recently. The main bedroom is working fine, the smaller (office) bedroom with a tiny rad will not get warm at all. 10mm plastic pipe on all radiators.
The other rads in the house get very hot, top and bottom . The whole house (except the office) is lovely and warm.
On the office rad, I have:
I'm thinking potential pipe blockage or faulty TRV. Water coming out of the bleed nipple is very clean and clear (probably because we're filling up our boiler on an almost-daily basis - different issue).
Or I'm not sure if the 'sludgy' sediment sinks to the bottom of the rad so that just very clean, clear water comes out of the top.
I have yet to flush the rad or do the 'bucket' test. Draining all the rads will be a swine because I don't have a drain valve on any of the downstairs radiators, so I'll have to remove one and find something to connect a hosepipe to one of the two radiator valves.
Anyway, I have this morning found the TRV's grey collar which has both an up arrow and a down arrow which must be lined up with the little mark on the body to suit flow direction.
I've checked all of our rads, about half of these are set 'incorrectly'. (i.e. on the pipe that gets hot first, the arrow is pointing downwards). I've had a look Danfoss's PDF file for the RAS-C2 and it says it should be set to 'up-arrow' for flow and 'down-arrow' for return. The rads do get lovely and warm though. I couldn't ask for better performance (except for the office one!)
I want to set them all to the 'correct' orientation before continuing but the girlfriend has (quite justifiably) said - if all of the other radiators work fine and it's been this way for this many years, why change it?
I'm a great believer in 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' but could correcting the setting on about half of the radiators introduce any problems or should I leave well alone? The setting obviously exists for a reason....
We moved into a house 18 months ago. It was built in 2007 and has a 2007 Potterton Powermax HE boiler. Eleven radiators in the house, various sizes.
Against our better judgement, we took my mother's advice and turned off the radiators in two unused bedrooms, to prevent heating up unused rooms. After reading advice on forums, I'll never turn one completely off again (except for removal). Lesson learnt.
We put them back on recently. The main bedroom is working fine, the smaller (office) bedroom with a tiny rad will not get warm at all. 10mm plastic pipe on all radiators.
The other rads in the house get very hot, top and bottom . The whole house (except the office) is lovely and warm.
On the office rad, I have:
- Removed TRV plastic 'head' section and gently pushed the pin up and down (many times). Tapped the side of the body with a hammer. Put a bit of WD40 on the pin.
- Open and closed lock shield valve a good number of times.
- Ruled out airlock by turning both valves off. Dissipated water via bleed nipple then removed bleed nipple. Connected a braided filling hose to bleed nipple hole (and up and out of the window) and one-at-a-time opened both lock shield and TRV valves.
- Turned off all other TRVs in the house to 'force' more flow into office RAD.
No change. Both plastic pipes still remain cold (although the one with the TRV did get the TINIEST bit lukewarm at one point). Near unnoticeable though.
I'm thinking potential pipe blockage or faulty TRV. Water coming out of the bleed nipple is very clean and clear (probably because we're filling up our boiler on an almost-daily basis - different issue).
Or I'm not sure if the 'sludgy' sediment sinks to the bottom of the rad so that just very clean, clear water comes out of the top.
I have yet to flush the rad or do the 'bucket' test. Draining all the rads will be a swine because I don't have a drain valve on any of the downstairs radiators, so I'll have to remove one and find something to connect a hosepipe to one of the two radiator valves.
Anyway, I have this morning found the TRV's grey collar which has both an up arrow and a down arrow which must be lined up with the little mark on the body to suit flow direction.
I've checked all of our rads, about half of these are set 'incorrectly'. (i.e. on the pipe that gets hot first, the arrow is pointing downwards). I've had a look Danfoss's PDF file for the RAS-C2 and it says it should be set to 'up-arrow' for flow and 'down-arrow' for return. The rads do get lovely and warm though. I couldn't ask for better performance (except for the office one!)
I want to set them all to the 'correct' orientation before continuing but the girlfriend has (quite justifiably) said - if all of the other radiators work fine and it's been this way for this many years, why change it?
I'm a great believer in 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' but could correcting the setting on about half of the radiators introduce any problems or should I leave well alone? The setting obviously exists for a reason....