In my home I have one radiator that rarely gets hot and unfortunately it's in the lounge. When the heating comes on there are some radiators that heat up immediately, others take a bit more time but do get there, and this one in the lounge never seems to get hot. It gets warm, but that's it. It's practically useless, and the lounge stays cold.
The thermostat is in the dining room, next to the lounge, and that's set to 21. The house never gets above 19 when it's really cold outside, so the heating is practically constantly on during the day when it's the coldest of winters, like now.
So my conundrum is - how do I get the lounge radiator to get hot without entirely compromising on the other radiators?
I've opened the TRV on the lounge radiator to max, and tweaked and adjusted the rad valves on the other radiators to try to get them to close off when just warmed, so that the lounge radiator will get the lion's share of the hot water, but the end result is usually lots of screaming/squealing from all the closing thermo rad valves. The sound is like torture, it reverberates through the plumbing and vibrates your head like the famous shower scene from Psycho at full volume. So consequently the rad valves are pretty much all at max everywhere. If I completely close the TRVs to the other radiators, forcing the central heating to go through the lounge radiator only (which does work), then the rest of the house isn't heated. So that's impractical.
I've checked the manual valves on the opposite side to the TRVs to ensure they're open, and they all are. But I've heard of something called load balancing, which I thought was an outdated concept since the introduction of TRVs, so I've not considered it - might this solve my problem?
Could the TRV be malfunctioning? If I take it off, that effectively opens the radiator valve fully, right?
I had the system flushed about 3 years ago, all radiators were cleaned out to remove gunk, brand new combi boiler and the usual inhibitor, and these new thermo rad valves fitted throughout.
Desperately looking for advice before I go out and by electric heaters for the lounge!
The thermostat is in the dining room, next to the lounge, and that's set to 21. The house never gets above 19 when it's really cold outside, so the heating is practically constantly on during the day when it's the coldest of winters, like now.
So my conundrum is - how do I get the lounge radiator to get hot without entirely compromising on the other radiators?
I've opened the TRV on the lounge radiator to max, and tweaked and adjusted the rad valves on the other radiators to try to get them to close off when just warmed, so that the lounge radiator will get the lion's share of the hot water, but the end result is usually lots of screaming/squealing from all the closing thermo rad valves. The sound is like torture, it reverberates through the plumbing and vibrates your head like the famous shower scene from Psycho at full volume. So consequently the rad valves are pretty much all at max everywhere. If I completely close the TRVs to the other radiators, forcing the central heating to go through the lounge radiator only (which does work), then the rest of the house isn't heated. So that's impractical.
I've checked the manual valves on the opposite side to the TRVs to ensure they're open, and they all are. But I've heard of something called load balancing, which I thought was an outdated concept since the introduction of TRVs, so I've not considered it - might this solve my problem?
Could the TRV be malfunctioning? If I take it off, that effectively opens the radiator valve fully, right?
I had the system flushed about 3 years ago, all radiators were cleaned out to remove gunk, brand new combi boiler and the usual inhibitor, and these new thermo rad valves fitted throughout.
Desperately looking for advice before I go out and by electric heaters for the lounge!