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following advice in my 'new boiler losing pressure' thread a few months back (sorted now btw), i removed the TRV from the hall rad where the wall stat is.
i sort of understood the advice at the time that the boiler will always be on if the hall never reaches the set temp.
but.....what im finding now is that the hall is the warmest room in the house, and the lounge is too cool. this seems a waste as nobody sits in the hall obviously.
now if i was to raise the temp via the wall stat to try and get the lounge warmer, then the hall would just get even hotter. lounge TRV is set to max btw.
whats my best options to equalise the heat and mebbes stop wasting money in the hall?
cheers
Do you have the option to switch to a wireless thermostat or relocate your current one to the lounge?
We have the same dilemma. Our room 'stat is in the cooler hall and is set at 20c so that the bedrooms and lounge get up to about 21-22. We deliberately got a wireless 'stat so that we could experiment with moving it but in practice we've never needed to move it because the system seems to work OK. I can't remember if the hall rad has a TRV on it or not but if it does, I'm sure Mrs Gti has opened it to full heat.
Best solution would be for you to use the lockshield valve on the other pipe to control the rad. Pull off the plastic cover and turn the spindle completely clockwise to close it. Then set your hall 'stat to, say, 19 or 20 and turn on the heating. It might take a few evenings of fiddling around but you should be able to balance the system by gradually opening the lockshield valve in the hall so that the rad begins to warm up and trips the 'stat, by which time the bedrooms and lounge will be toasty.
One question: why do women think that by turning the 'stat up to 25, the house will somehow warm up faster?
This worked for me:
I shut all the lockshields on all radiators. I then opened all the upstairs ones 1/4 turn and the first 1 or 2 downstairs rads 1/4 turn. The remaining downstairs ones I opened 1/2 turn.
Sounds like your hallway is pinching all the hot water as the lockshield is too open.
So the thermostat is in the hall, where the rad with no TRV is?
If your hallway is getting warm faster than the lounge, then the heating will turn off when the hall is 'at temperature' but the lounge is still warming up.
Probably not the 'right' way to go about it, but I would close the lockshield valve on the hallway radiator by 1/2 a turn and give it a day or two. If it is still too warm, give it another half turn.
This is what I've done in our house to try & stabilise the various rooms and it takes a while but does work.
If you google 'balancing radiators' you'll find various guides to doing the whole house in one go.
Do you have the option to switch to a wireless thermostat or relocate your current one to the lounge?
nope, its a real old one, wouldnt know how to relocate it but sounds expensive and would probably be better off buying a new stat.
i dont know what a lockshield is so dont really follow what youre all saying, altho you all seem to be saying the same thing which is encouraging 🙂
what will (partially' closing the lockshield mean in easy to understand terms? it sounds like itll restrict flow, why would that be good? and if doing that reduces the temp, whats the difference between that and having a TRV that you just crank down to reduce temp?
thanks
Lockshield is the end which isn't the TRV end. Looks like this:
[img] https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ7nkWcc72ENlC3un428Bz7BT4Nhzk56I3zd7LZSRv6GsJDbuSv9xneKA [/img]
Watch the video I posted above.
Water will flow through the easiest/quickest route (i.e. the one in which all the valves are wide open), which means that all the hot water might be flowing through one path and not getting to the radiators in your lounge. Closing the lockshields will slow the water flow rate and means more hot water is diverted down other radiator paths.
The TRV will have been screwed onto one end of the radiator and at the other end should be a similar valve with just a plastic cover on it. That's the lockshield. You use it to isolate the rad or to control the flow. Everybody does seem to be giving you the same advice.
A more expensive solution that might not necessarily work, would be to get an electrician to fit a wireless thermostat.
turning the 'stat up to 25, the house will somehow warm up faster?
Not just women. All of my inlaws are alternately blasting full heat and opening all the windows. Mental
stumpy's advice is the easiest way to get this right without messing with the whole system.
if you keep reducing the flow (by closing the lockshield valve gradually) to the hall rad until the hall and lounge are comfortable at the same time then you'll sort it.
what you are doing is slowing the heating of the hall to match the heating of the lounge.
there are a few reasons you have an 'open' radiator (LSVs only) on the circuit, one of which is to prevent the pump pushing against a closed circuit if all the TRVs shut down.
thanks, ill have a play around then over the next few days/weeks. dooosuk, havent watched the vid yet, just got in and am about to watch, but if you shut all the lockshields does that mean no rads will get warm? (spose i should have waited til id watched the vid, but ive typed it now) 🙂
and....
why do women think that by turning the 'stat up to 25, the house will somehow warm up faster?
definitely..... wife gets into car first thing in the morning..."ooooh its freezing" and turns the dial up to max. ive given up saying anything 🙂
if you shut all the lockshields does that mean no rads will get warm?
Correct.
So don't completely close any of them (unless you don;t want that radiator to get warm, ever) but if it's open by a quarter of a turn then it will get less water, and warm up slower, than one that's open by a full turn.
One question: why do women think that by turning the 'stat up to 25, the house will somehow warm up faster?
definitely..... wife gets into car first thing in the morning..."ooooh its freezing" and turns the dial up to max. ive given up saying anything
Glad its not just me that suffers this
Do you have the option to switch to a wireless thermostat or relocate your current one to the lounge?
This won't really help, though, will it.
You may as well turn the hall placed thermostat up to 24, as it sounds like that's what's needed to make the lounge warmer.
Follow the advice about balancing the rads, as opposed to re-siting the thermostat.
DrP
Dunno what you're all on about, my radiators are screwed to the wall - no balancing required.
😈
they'll fall off if you don't...
DrP