Cold end radiator

[jinja]

I live in a stone cottage where much of the pipework is inaccessible (even the Water Board can't find where the water comes in!) and there's no internal mains stopcock. The bathroom radiator, which is on the ground floor, remains luke warm (evenly over its whole surface) while all other radiators are hot. It Bleeds OK, and the inlet valve is hot, so the radiator must be blocked within. However, the heating system is a "closed"/"sealed?" system and the "expansion tank" is a sealed plastic container with a pressure valve attached.

How can I clean out the system (and with what) when there is nowhere I can feed in a cleaning fluid? Then again, there are no thermostatic valves on the radiators, so how can I re-balance the system when PlumCenter tell me that mobile radiator thermometers are a thing of the past?

 

[Whitespirit66]

What happens to the bathroom rad, if you turn all the others off?

Clip on thermometers never go out of fashion!

http://www.heatingcontrolsonline.co.uk/clipon-pipe-thermometer-p-644.html

 

[jinja]

I'll try switching off all the other rads - but not just yet, in case my wife beats me over the head with a saucepan for making the house cold.

I'll try independent hardware shops to see if they sell clip-on thermometers.

 

[ianniann]

Infra-red thermometers are easier and quicker to use for this task, but really you don't need either. You're not calibrating the space shuttle, you're just getting all the radiators to heat up at about the same speed and to within a few degrees of eachother. You should be able to feel a 15C-20C temperature difference with your hand, while a 5C difference will not be so noticeable.

You don't balance with TRVs. You use the small brass valve at the other end (or maybe at both ends in your case!), often hidden under a plastic cap. You'll need a tool to turn them, a pair of pliers can be used. You only need to turn off the other radiators for a few minutes to check if the bathroom one heats up. If it does then balance away. If not it may be blocked, although sometimes one radiator just refuses to take water through properly whatever you do.

 

[jinja]

That sounds like good sense to me, Ianniann. Thank you for that advice. I'm not going to act on it until the ice on the inside of our windows has melted and I can see out.

As a matter of interest, is the central heating water pumped upstairs first, utilising gravity to help it get around the downstairs rads, or is it pumped around downstairs first, relying on the warm water to rise quickly upstairs?