Hi all,
Wanted to share my experience balancing my heating system. This needed doing as the rad in our living room wasn't heating up at all. The job was complicated somewhat by 4 of our 9 rads not having a lockshield but 2 manual valves. This was 5 before I replaced a leaking valve on our towel rail last week and put a lockshield in.
Initially went the 'high tech'/'proper' route by opening all valves fully, figuring out the order they heat up in, allowing everything to cool, starting with first rad and adjusting valves on each until the pipe temp difference was 12 degrees. I fell at the first hurdle here as it was fairly difficult running around the house to find out the order things were heating in. Not only that but I was getting wildly inconsistent readings with my IR thermometer on some radiators, I believe this is an issue with pipes reflecting the IR. Apparently the solution to this is to wrap it in something dull like duct tape but I had none to hand.
In the end I drew up a diagram of what I thought out pipe runs looked like. It's fairly hard to figure out as we've got 3 rads with drain valves so 2 of them are likely on a drop from upstairs. I gave it my best guess from what I could see of the pipework and where I could feel the flow pipe chased in to the wall. I then guessed which order hot water would be arriving at each based on distance from boiler and what floor they were on. I started by opening the first rad a quarter turn, increasing this on subsequent rads, adding an extra quarter turn for bigger rads. Pleased to say that after turning the heating on this morning, they've all heated up evenly, none of them are cold and none of them are screaming hot!
I'm the first to admit this isn't the 'right' way to do it - but I'm better off than I was before at least.
Wanted to share my experience balancing my heating system. This needed doing as the rad in our living room wasn't heating up at all. The job was complicated somewhat by 4 of our 9 rads not having a lockshield but 2 manual valves. This was 5 before I replaced a leaking valve on our towel rail last week and put a lockshield in.
Initially went the 'high tech'/'proper' route by opening all valves fully, figuring out the order they heat up in, allowing everything to cool, starting with first rad and adjusting valves on each until the pipe temp difference was 12 degrees. I fell at the first hurdle here as it was fairly difficult running around the house to find out the order things were heating in. Not only that but I was getting wildly inconsistent readings with my IR thermometer on some radiators, I believe this is an issue with pipes reflecting the IR. Apparently the solution to this is to wrap it in something dull like duct tape but I had none to hand.
In the end I drew up a diagram of what I thought out pipe runs looked like. It's fairly hard to figure out as we've got 3 rads with drain valves so 2 of them are likely on a drop from upstairs. I gave it my best guess from what I could see of the pipework and where I could feel the flow pipe chased in to the wall. I then guessed which order hot water would be arriving at each based on distance from boiler and what floor they were on. I started by opening the first rad a quarter turn, increasing this on subsequent rads, adding an extra quarter turn for bigger rads. Pleased to say that after turning the heating on this morning, they've all heated up evenly, none of them are cold and none of them are screaming hot!
I'm the first to admit this isn't the 'right' way to do it - but I'm better off than I was before at least.
!