Hot Radiators

Hi,

When I turn the valve on the side of the radiator it seems to have 2 settings - off or piping hot no matter how short a distance I turn it e.g. 1/4 of a turn

Any ideas?

Thanks

Its a bit like turning a tap on, it only controls the flow. If all other rads were off & that was on a little & close to the boiler it would get hot eventually

Oops - don't think I have explained myself very well! Just shows my lack of DIY skills.

All my radiators will go on, all of my radiators will go off. We have no main thermostat and as we've only just moved into the house we've not had chance to fit thermostats to the individual radiators.

In an attempt to just have the radiators on luke warm (so we don't boil to death) we've tried to turn the valve on the radiators to alter the temperature - this worked in my last house. However with all the radiators in our new house if the valve is turned fully one way the radiators is cold (off) as you would expect but if I turn it even a few millimetres the other way it's on piping hot. I can seem to make it do luke warm no matter how short a distance I turn the valve.

Does that make any more sense?

You can't make that sort of adjustment with ordinary rad valves, at least not for practical purposes (it's theoretically possible, of course). Perhaps the ones you had before were rather special "proportional" valves.

You obviously need some way of controlling the heat output until such time as you bring the system up to scratch. I think your only option is to turn down the boiler 'stat.