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Just installed a smart-heating system in our new (to us) house & replaced all the TRVs with smart ones, leaving three non-smart rads: two in the bathroom and one in the hall. The smart system is great as the rooms are now zoned, however when the heating is on the bathroom and hall are always heated!
The bathrooms ones have manual taps so are meant to be adjustable... it’s my understanding that bathroom rads don’t normally have TRVs as the old-style ones are affected by the humidity - presumably smart ones should be ok though so any reason I can’t get a plumber to fit some?
The rad in the hall doesn’t have taps but has little adjusters hidden under caps... bit of Googling suggests this is a bypass rad, which is necessary to stop the boiler overheating if all the old-style TRVs are closed. Given that with the smart system the boiler will only fire up if at least one TRV is open (or hot water is being used) is it ok to replace these valves with smart TRVs? Or sensible to keep it as-is (if the latter, is it possible/sensible to adjust the valves a bit to “throttle” it so it doesn’t heat up quite as much?)
If you have installed a new boiler, an automatic bypass valve may also have been installed. If your heating system is controlled by a thermostat, you shouldn't install a TRV to the radiators in the room with the thermostat, as doing so defeats the point of the thermostat.
If you install a TRV in the bathroom, it will probably turn off when you have a bath/shower as the room temp will increase.
If your radiator is getting too hot, you could reduce the flow temperature from the boiler.
Your hall rad sounds like the bypass, I'd leave that dumb as a just in case. Yes you can throttle it in a bit or just fit a bypass loop and fit another TRV. The bathroom rads should be fine to fit TRVs to, we've had one on ours for years and never had an issue.
If you install a TRV in the bathroom, it will probably turn off when you have a bath/shower as the room temp will increase.
In which case there is no longer a heating demand.
If your heating system is controlled by a thermostat, you shouldn’t install a TRV to the radiators in the room with the thermostat, as doing so defeats the point of the thermostat.
Except on a smart system that knows which room the thermostat is in and which TRVs are controlled within that room.
@pjm60 the boiler’s about 12 years old I think. Don’t believe the old advice about not installing TRVs and thermostats in the same room stands any more (with smart heating) as every room has (multiple) thermostats which all work in sync - this is probably why the hall rad doesn’t have one though (as that’s where the only thermostat was previously). Question was more, do I have to keep the hall rad as a “bypass” rad (if that’s indeed what it is)?
ta, can I crank it down a bit though somehow? Only if any other room is heating (usually the case at the moment as someone is almost always home!) then the hall rad is heating, so the hall is always roasting which seems a bit of a waste!Your hall rad sounds like the bypass, I’d leave that dumb as a just in case.
I think the question I have to ask to all that is what are you trying to achieve.
Seems alot of extra money to achieve not alot
Fwiw I'd always have my bypass rad in the bathroom . Guaranteed warm towels 🙂
zoned heating, 2 main problems which the smart system solves: at the moment on a weekday only the office needs to be heated, want this to happen automatically without having to constantly fiddle about with stuff or heat the rest of the house. Also it’s a chalet bungalow, the bedroom upstairs is REALLY cold relative to the rest of the house so in order to get it up to say 18’ the hall thermostat would have to be on about 28’ 😂I think the question I have to ask to all that is what are you trying to achieve.
Good shout about the bathroom rad though... if we NEED a bypass then I’ll get it moved to there... like you say, I’ve got no problem with always having toastie towels/dressing gown 😀
You definitely still need a bypass. A number of different failures could cause the trv to request heating without being able to open the valve.
As others point out, usually bathroom is your best bypass due to drying towels and general humidity.
We have exact setup you describe, with addition of a 'dumb' TRV on the hallway and bypass in bathroom. House is now far more regulated. But COVID has buggered the saving we were making with geolocation.
Regarding the upstairs bedroom being cold. You need to balance your radiators. This is what the lockshield valves are for on the radiators. Lots of tutorials on how to do it. But basically if you have all the valves open the water will take the path of least resistance and not circulate to the farthest radiator. You close down the lockshield valves a bit on the closest radiators to the boiler to force the water to the farthest radiator.
As others have said keep the bathroom as the bypass so that radiator's always open.
you shouldn’t install a TRV to the radiators in the room with the thermostat, as doing so defeats the point of the thermostat.
This may be the case with some systems, but in most cases the main controller/thermostat will be part of the system and able to be bound to any smart TRV in that same room/zone (or it becomes dumb). My main controller/thermostat is in the lounge with a rad that has a smart TRV, the two are bound together, which is handy as the coldest part of the room is not where the rad is, so that's where the main controller/thermostat sits. It basically becomes a remote thermostat for that smart TRV, which actually will work better than using the thermostat within the smart TRV right beside the hot rad.