Radiator not heating up on one side

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Any success with the rad ?.
Hey! Unfortunately not. Got a plumber in and the diagnosis was it was blocked. Due to other circs he wasn't able to unblock it on the day. I think the blockage is at the top of the rad. It is made up of two horizontal cylinders attached to 12 or so vertical bars. The bottom cylinder gets red hot but the top only gets hot above the 2 bars that heat up. The bleed is on the right side of the top cylinder - when plumber was here he undid the nut on the other side and a lot of air (and filthy water) came out. So I think the blockage is stopping the water flow and also preventing air from being released when the bleed is open.

The prescribed treatment was power flush, but my dad is a plumber and he's visiting in January so think I'll let him loose on it with a hose in the back garden.

Although if you have any other advice on how to possibly deal with it in the meantime I'm all ears. It is very frustrating - was thinking of taking the bleed valve off and shoving a wire clothes hanger in early haha. Don't worry I won't do that.
 
Hey! Unfortunately not. Got a plumber in and the diagnosis was it was blocked. Due to other circs he wasn't able to unblock it on the day. I think the blockage is at the top of the rad. It is made up of two horizontal cylinders attached to 12 or so vertical bars. The bottom cylinder gets red hot but the top only gets hot above the 2 bars that heat up. The bleed is on the right side of the top cylinder - when plumber was here he undid the nut on the other side and a lot of air (and filthy water) came out. So I think the blockage is stopping the water flow and also preventing air from being released when the bleed is open.

The prescribed treatment was power flush, but my dad is a plumber and he's visiting in January so think I'll let him loose on it with a hose in the back garden.

Although if you have any other advice on how to possibly deal with it in the meantime I'm all ears. It is very frustrating - was thinking of taking the bleed valve off and shoving a wire clothes hanger in early haha. Don't worry I won't do that.
Although if this isn't a terrible idea let me know...
 
Do you know what side the flow is on ?,still think its a baffle thing :)
Not long to January and I'm sure your Dad will sort it.
 
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Do you know what side the flow is on ?,still think its a baffle thing :)
Not long to January and I'm sure your Dad will sort it.
Yup it's on the right side. When the plumber was looking at it the water was spraying through when the valve on the right was open.
 
Ok
My column rads have the flow on the left as there is a baffle in them .Did the rad ever work ?I know you never put it in but if you know the sellers might be worth asking >.
 
Ok
My column rads have the flow on the left as there is a baffle in them .Did the rad ever work ?I know you never put it in but if you know the sellers might be worth asking >.
Yup it did work before.

I also have an identical radiator set up the same way in another room which works fine.
 
Do you know what side the flow is on ?,still think its a baffle thing :)
Not long to January and I'm sure your Dad will sort it.
Been a while, but I finally got this sorted and you were absolutely right about it being a baffle problem. The combination of the baffle being two columns in and the radiator being on upside down caused this to happen. So the water was flowing in the right side and straight out the return on the left at the bottom, because there was no baffle. Convection allowed hot water to flow up the first two columns but the baffle blocked it from flowing leftwards. I think columns 3 to 9 were still full of air, because the baffle was blocking air from moving towards the bleed. And so convection wasn't letting the hot water travel up those columns because it was full of air.

I flipped it over and now the baffle is 7 columns in on the bottom. And now the whole radiator is capable of heating, which is great. Although we have now discovered the radiator is a bit small for the room, but it still heats it and is a lot cheaper than the convector heater we were using in the meantime. So I'm pretty pleased. Astonished that this even happened though because I'm told the radiator was fully functioning before the work was done before we got the keys. So they'd had to have removed all the nuts when they removed the radiator and put them on the wrong way. Hard to believe but who knows.

I now need to balance the system because with all rads on this one is still pretty cold. But we rarely ever have all rads on at once and there aren't any issues with the other rads being off balance so not a major issue.


Thanks everyone for the help!
 

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