Bathroom radiator used to be permanently warm now it is not

I have just had a mini argument with my husband as it has dawned on me that since we have not needed any heating in the hot weather our bathroom radiator is always cold. This may not seem odd but I am convinced that before we had it replaced by the current towel rail model it was always warm if the water was warm even if the heating was not on.

As we had a cold winter our heating wuld have been on most of the time and at the start of the year we had some radiators flushed out and the plumber said that the flow from the boiler was the wrong way round (?). Could he have changed this and hence done something to the bathroom radiator?

It would be good if it could be warm all the time as it would dry the towels more effectively.

what kind of heating system is is it a combi ?do you have a hot water cylinder,do you have a solid fuel boiler or aga

you say it is a new one? has it got a thermostatic valve? Is it turned off?

Have you considered the cost of running a 500watt radiator 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, even in hot weather like this?

Have you bled the gas out of it?

We have an old fashioned gravity fed system with a cylinder.

We replaced the bathroom suite last year and fitted a towel warmer type radiator as we didnt have the width for our original radiator. Although the pipes had to be altered a bit to accomodate the new radiator I am sure that nothing else was altered.

The radiator does not have a thermostatic valve and I put the heating on to make sure that it was working. I am not sure about the other valve (ie. the one you dont turn). Anyway the pipes going in to the radiator are not warm now so it cant be that the radiator is shut off and would warm up if it was opened up so to speak.

I was always under the impression that the old radiator was a sort of 'extension' of the hot water cylinder in that when the water was hot it was too. I dont think that this was costing any more money. I have read too that sometimes bathroom radiators are plumbed in to the 'primary circuit' just so that they are warm all the time.

Its all very odd. I do wonder that if the radiator does work when the heating is turned on and the boiler fires how come it used to be warm without. Can the two systems work together?

I think that I might need to replace it with a combination electric/ordinary type towel rail. And actually it is really pretty poor at giving out heat so I might even be better with more conventional but vertical style one.