Middle floor radiators very poor

[AJW2]

Hi all,
Was hoping for some advice about my gas central heating. It is a closed system and only 2 years old (new house). Have kept on at the builder of course, but their engineer keeps saying there is nothing wrong so before I press harder can anyone help?

We have 3 floors and the radiators work great on the ground and top floors, but tend not to heat the middle floor rooms very well at all - baltic sometimes

Have bled the radiators and all are fine. The boiler is also on the middle floor <<CORRECTION, boiler is on ground floor - sorry >> so can only assume the pump is fine. The middle floor radiators do come on and get hot (not as hot as the others mind you), but never stay on long enough to heat the rooms. Thermo valve on each radiator is open full, but even so they seem to think the room is warm and so the radiator cools. You can enter one of these rooms and it's freezing, but the radiator is luke warm while on the other floors the radiatoers are piping hot. Any thoughts?
Many thanks, in advance
AJW2

 

[PerryOne]

I assume that you have thermostatic valves on all radiators?
In the normal way, depending on where your home stat is and how long you have the heating on, each room should hit its target temperature and then turn off passing the hot water on to the next radiator and so on, until they are all satisfied.
However, if the room where you have the home stat reaches its set temperature and turns the system off, then all the radiator thermostats are useless.
They only stop rooms from overheating, they cannot call for heat.
A solution I have used from time to time, is to have extra thermostats in the cold rooms, or move the existing one into the cold room.

Here I have my home zoned with wireless thermostats, that I move from room to room, ensuring that the room I am in, is in control.

 

[AJW2]

Many thanks PerryOne and yes they all have thermostatic valves.

The wireless thermostat solution sounds very interesting/ideal and had never even considered or heard of them.

Your explination and soulutoion sound great so again my thanks, I will seek out wireless thermostats.

Best wishes
AJW2

 

[jackthom]

If the middle floor radiators are cooling down while the rest of the house is still receiving heat from the boiler you need to find out why.

Is there already some sort of zone system with a room thermostat for the middle floor?

If not, try removing the head from one of the TRVs to ensure it remains fully open and see if that makes a difference to that radiator.

 

[AJW2]

Hi jackthom and thanks for the input.

There is no zone system, but I suspect there should be/should have been 2 zones installed, perhaps not officially but certainly logically considering there is 3 floors and only one sensor/thermostat.

What I did last night was moved the sensor from the ground floor and have temporarily sited it in the main bedroom on the middle floor. This seems to have done the trick as now the middle floor is pretty much ideal as of last night. I had to go around the ground and top floor and turn all the other radiators down a bit as they are now staying on too long, but I suspect I will need find a new balance if keeping the sensor where I now have it.

I also found the sensor (a very small thing with no controls, just 2 wires) behind a small grate next to my door bell (didn't know it was there before, doh!). This was, honestly, sitting about 3 feet above the hall radiator which has no TRV as is one of the always open radiators to dissipate excess heat. Even with my lack of knowledge, the sensor should not be above a radiator as it will keep knocking off the heating before the other rooms reach the required temp. - which it now appears was happening on the middle floor. Exactly why the top floor didn't suffer from this I don't know, perhaps just better insulation as there is only velux windows up there and the the rooms are smaller than those on the middle floor.

Sorry for all the spiel here, but wanted to clarify as much as poss.

I will however, check the three middle floor rooms TRV's to make sure so thanks again.