Central Heating with TRV question

[OldJake]

Just had our boiler replaced. 20+ year old Glowworm which was starting to show signs that it would probably fail. It was one with a separate water tank and our hot water was woeful in terms of pressure. Replaced with a Glowworm combi and wow! Hot water at mains pressure in an instant. I really didn't think it would be quite that good when the guy was quote. Also had a power flush and magnaclean. I never want to have to go through the noise of that again! But it was brilliant watching him clean the magnets off when he'd done each floor.

Anyway, that's back story. The rads and TRVs are old. Most work but, typically, the one in our bedroom seems to be dodgy. They shut the rads down when they were working. The one in our bedroom appears to be stuck in the off position. So the TRV works in as much as you can turn it up but I suspect the actual valve is stuck down. 14 degrees in the bedroom is no fun!

Looking at it, it has a 15mm on the bottom and 1/4 (?) on the rad connection. All the ones I've seen seem to have 15mm on both.

The problem, as you can see from the pic attached is that the pipe comes straight out of the floor so there's little or no room for any sort of adapter.

Am I looking at this wrong? What would you recommend we do? Once I have the valves working all over the house I'm going to swap the heads to smart ones.

Cheers
Andy

 

[muggles]

You'd need to take the connection out of the radiator using a radiator wrench, then install the new 15mm one that comes with the new TRVs. If you want a recommendation for new TRVs, IMI Eclipse are excellent, and for a smart home system look at Salus

 

[fixitflav]

Just had our boiler replaced. 20+ year old Glowworm which was starting to show signs that it would probably fail. It was one with a separate water tank and our hot water was woeful in terms of pressure. Replaced with a Glowworm combi and wow! Hot water at mains pressure in an instant. I really didn't think it would be quite that good when the guy was quote. Also had a power flush and magnaclean. I never want to have to go through the noise of that again! But it was brilliant watching him clean the magnets off when he'd done each floor.

Anyway, that's back story. The rads and TRVs are old. Most work but, typically, the one in our bedroom seems to be dodgy. They shut the rads down when they were working. The one in our bedroom appears to be stuck in the off position. So the TRV works in as much as you can turn it up but I suspect the actual valve is stuck down. 14 degrees in the bedroom is no fun!

Looking at it, it has a 15mm on the bottom and 1/4 (?) on the rad connection. All the ones I've seen seem to have 15mm on both.

The problem, as you can see from the pic attached is that the pipe comes straight out of the floor so there's little or no room for any sort of adapter.

Am I looking at this wrong? What would you recommend we do? Once I have the valves working all over the house I'm going to swap the heads to smart ones.

Cheers
Andy

View attachment 205970

If you take the head off, you might be able to free the valve by working the little plunger up and down. If that works you have heating. If the head has had it so doesn't cut off on rising room temperature, throttle the iso valve on the other end, as a stopgap.

 

[OldJake]

Hi Muggles

Ah! Yes! I've just been looking at a techy type diagram of a TRV and I think I see it now. So the thinner white bit between the tail and the wider white bit on the rad comes out and is replaced by one that has a 15mm thread.

I've been puzzling over this for too long now.

All my Smart Home stuff is done already. It's really just the TRVs that I need to complete the picture. I'm running HomeAssistant on a Pi with a Zigbee USB stick so it's all local. I have a Netatmo thermostat already that plays with a Netatmo weather station so I'll probably stick with Netatmo for the Smart TRVs as well.

Thanks for the reply. That definitely completes the puzzle for what I need to do next, I think.

Cheers,
Andy

 

[muggles]

Yep that's it, the whole lot comes out

 

[OldJake]

Hi Fixitflav

Thanks for that. I have done that once before and it's been ok since. Now, it's fine if it's left open but then just sticks again the first time you close it down at all. Now is the time to feel the pain of a cold bedroom until I can do it properly, I think. I just need to read the instructions for the boiler so I know how to drain the system down enough to remove that one AND fill it back up properly afterwards.

Cheers
Andy