Creative ideas needed!

[alex1987]

Hi there, I am a total plumbing novice but the situation is this: we are looking at designs for a new kitchen. Currently there is a radiator along one wall which was kept when the kitchen was last redone about 15 years ago. It its underneath a worktop as you can see in the photos.

Ideally we would remove this and look at other options like a plinth heater or underfloor heating. We don’t have this current one up high anyway. The issue we have is that we have a microbore system and have had it drained and power flushed a few times, and were told last time to avoid doing this too many times.

I’m assuming that the system would need to be drained to remove this? From what I’ve read it sounds like the pipes would also need to be traced back to the manifold and capped there?

Is it possible to remove this any other way or does anyone have any creative suggestions for how to replace it with a new one and build this into the kitchen plan somehow? Or another way that the pipework could be configured with minimal disruption?

thanks

 

[oldbutnotdead]

You don't have to trace the pipe back to the manifold, you just need to identify which pair of pipes at the manifold go to that rad. So start with a cold system. Turn all rads off except that one . Make sure that one is on full (open the lockshield all the way as well, count how many turns so you can reset it). Fire system up, see which pipes get warm.
Then make sure no other rads are using that pair as well (shouldn't be on microbore but best to check)-close that one, open rad valves in nearby rooms one by one, make sure other pipes warm up, mark them as you're doing this for future use).
Depending on your eventual kitchen layout theres nowt stopping you using that pair to feed an underplinth heater. Feeding wet ufh might be possible but would need changes at the manifold, prob cheaper to run new