Cold Bedroom

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7 Dec 2005
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Location
Hampshire
Country
United Kingdom
Hi all, I have detached bungalow with a north facing bedroom which in turn has three insulated outside walls and a 3m wide double glazed bay window. I am having trouble getting the room above 13 deg with it dropping as low as 11 on cold nights. The radiator is a 1400 x 600 double convector. The room stat is in the hall set at 24-25 deg. How can I ensure that the bedroom radiator does not shut down when teh room stat turns the heating off? Do I just nee a bigger rad?? :confused:
 
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You've hit up against the classic weakness of a control system that uses the temperature of a single room (the hall in your case) to control the temperature of all the rooms in the house! It can never work properly, yet it is the most common heating system in the UK!

I'm assuming that the bedroom rad is working and gets nice and hot -- it's simply not able to pump out enough heat before the thermostat in the hall switches all rads off.

One simple 'cure' would be, as you suggest, to fit a bigger rad. How much bigger depends on the room size and other factors. A central heating engineer or knowledgeable plumber can do the calculation for you, and there are websites to help. You would be advised to get the all the rad outputs 'balanced' as well.

Another, better, cure is to fit thermostatic radiator valves to all rads, and then turn the wall thermostat up to maximum (effectively turning it into a permanently-on switch). The pump would then run all the time the heating was 'on' -- which does it no harm -- and the temperature in each room would be individually controlled by its TRVs. But you would still need to have big enough rads in each room, especially the freezing bedroom.

(If your system has no bypass across the pump you will need to leave one of the rads without a TRV, so that the situation where all rads are shut off with the pump running can never arise.)

Hope this helps.

Big Al
 
Al thanks for the reply. I have TRV's on all rads except the one in the hall. What if I turn the hall rad right down so that it does not switch the roomstat off. My bathroom rad is on a bypass so I can us eth towel rail heater without other rads on.
 
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Turning down the hall rad will, as you say, keep the wall thermostat switched 'on' all the time, and therefore keep the pump running all the time. But then the hall will be freezing all the time as well!

Doing what I suggested -- turning up the thermostat to max -- will also keep it switched 'on' all the time, and the pump running all the time, but now the hall will be warm (all the time).

Which is the better solution? Go figure!

Big Al
 
i use the hall to fight off hoards of carol singers..... so the colder the better..

actually i aint had none this year, :cry:

:LOL:
 
Thanks for all the advice. I turned the room stat up and the hall rad down a touch and this morning the bedroom was 18 deg :) . Not sure what the gas bill will be though :(
 
Hi all, I calculated the heat loss for the room which came out at 3186 BTU/Hr. The rad in the room is a double panel 1400 x 600 rated at 8126 BTU so I guess the rad should not need to be swapped.
 

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