Hot water system can heat towel rails?

[Michael F H]

Another heating mystery in my house. Currently neither towel rail gets hot even when the rest of the radiators are warm. The likely diagnosis by a heating engineer yesterday are the pipes are blocked, (they are 8mm microbore after all - and once he measured the pressure in them after disconnecting a towel rail, there was frankly a pathetic amount of water dribbling out) and should be repiped with standard pipe back to the main feed manifold and then everything to be rebalanced. This is fine with me - anything that reduces the percentage of microbore in the house can only be a good thing and since I'm having a bathroom refitted, the floor is already just boards and taking it up isn't going to be a hassle. I'm jus waiting on a price and a date.

However... It re-raised the question in my mind of why (back when they used to work) the towel rails would get hot in summer, even if the heating was turned off. At least that's how I remember it. Two of my neighbours - both plumbers (one a heating engineer) themselves, say all the houses on this street (McAlpine, built in late 1980s) have the towel rails connected to the hot water system so you can have warm towels all year around. And that explanation does fit with them being hot in the summer. The heating engineer yesterday says they do not work off the hot water system - the opposite opinion.

But how does that even work? Surly if that were so you'd get brown water out the hot tap. The bathroom fitter said he'd never heard of such an thing.

Is this idea actually even possible ? Is it likely and if so, how does that actually work in reality?

 

[JohnD]

of course you can plumb towel rails to be heated by the circuit that heats the hot water cylinder. This is neither novel nor unusual.

Is your plumber old enough to shave? Or has he recently retrained from some other job?

 

[Michael F H]

of course you can plumb towel rails to be heated by the circuit that heats the hot water cylinder. This is neither novel nor unusual.

Is your plumber old enough to shave? Or has he recently retrained from some other job?

The heating engineer that said "no" looked about late 20s, early 30s. The two neighbours who said "yes" , early 40s, early 50s.

So assuming that it *is* plumbed that way.. is there any way to tell aside from the obvious - the towel rails getting hot (which they don't right now as they don't work). Not because I need to be either a plumber or a heating engineer but I'm just curious how it actually works in practice. Is there an entirely separate heating loop for these two items?

 

[JohnD]

no, I expect they will be tee'd off the flow and return to the cylinder.

they need careful balancing to prevent them stealing all the flow, so maybe have a look at the lockshields.

It is not tapwater that flows through them. It is the boiler water that is sent to the coil in the cylinder.

 

[JohnD]

The heating engineer that said "no" looked about late 20s, early 30s.

perhaps he was taught how to install a combi, and does not understand the better methods of supplying hot water.