Radiator Balancing clarification

[JohnD]

I balanced my rads "by hand" and when starting up the heating today, I notice they are quite slow to warm up all over.

I have a modulating boiler, and a modulating pump, amd TRVs on almost all of them (the one nearest the wall stat I have adjusted to be the slowest to warm up, it has no TRV).

I see the boiler has modulated itself down to two bars (out of 5) and indicates 62C. The wall stat is still calling for heat. I wonder if I would do better to open up the lockshields so the rads get hot faster? especially as the TRVs, pump and boiler will all adjust themselves to suit?

I have not got any "cold" rads. A few are turned down on the TRVs as the guest rooms are not being used. All my rads are "oversized" so they can easily cope with exceptional weather, and can heat the house quickly if I have been away.

 

[D_Hailsham]

Do you still have your boiler thermostat set to 60°C?

You were advised, in previous topics, that this might not be high enough for your installation. Try turning it up to Max and see what the effect is.

 

[JohnD]

boiler has been at 70C for some time and that seems to suit the HW.

Today on CH I notice it modulates down, and eventually stops firing when it reaches 70, then restarts at about 56 (I was not standing at the boiler when it fired)

room stat is set to 20C, and I observe from the thermometer I have put on top of the stat that it is maintaining that temperature very closely. Just now it is not calling for heat and the boiler is not firing, the pump stopped a few secs ago, boiler temp is 44C. Pump overrun is about 12 mins.

Rads with TRVs are warm, the non-TRV rad is hotter.

The outside temperature here is 15C and I was away for a couple of days, it seemed quite chilly inside today so I put the heating on and watched what happened.