Some radiators not working in new home!

bryanb

Unless previous owners have lied about whether things work, you have no recourse to them, it is the buyer's problem.

keystone

banana-man wrote: »

not sure what a TRV is to be honest. what i have done is turned the inlet (i.e. the one on the opposite side of the thermostat) on fully, and i tried moving it left and right a little too just in case it had jammed.

OK first of all. Your TRVs will look like this:



or something very similar. They have a graduated scale from 0 - 6 (probably a * as well). As you rotate the top white part you can set the temperature by locating the triangle mark on the RH one with scale. The head contains a thermostatic device which operates a plunger which openbs and closes the spring loaded valve (inside the chrome part beneath the head) to allow hot water to flow into the radiator.

The first thing you need to do is to find out if the valves on the rads concerned are stuck (because they do if not used for a while). At the bottom of the head is a knurled collar. You can see it clearly on the RH TRV but its also there on the LH one as well. Undoing this will allow the head to be removed. When it is removed you will see the top of thevalve and a pin sticking out of the centre. Push this up and down manually to ensure it is free to operate.

Once you have done that then at the othere end of the rad is your lockshield valve. Another poster has shown you what this looks like. Note this is NOT a thermostat as you seem to understand it is a valve. If you've already been operating these then its likely that you've upset the system balance but we can come back to that later.

Once you have ensured the TRV valves are clear to operate open the lockshield valves between one and one and a half turns and leave them be.

Leaving the TRV head OFF operate you heating system and tell us what happens.

More later once you've done that.

Cheers

keystone

banana-man wrote: »

also, in the bathroom i have a chrome towel radiator...
on the top right there is what seems to be where you bleed it from (which i have done) - but where is the TRV? is that on the opposite top corner, as it just looks like a big nut that you open with a spanner? (scared of flooding my bathroom!)
there are two thermostats on the bottom, which i have turned up to full.....please help!

Lets deal with this one separately.

Firstly the termostats at the bottom most probably aren't thermostats they will be valves.

Second on your other thread you were asked if the towel rail was on your DHW or CH circuit. If you have an open vented system (a hot water cylinder in your airing cupboard plus a large and a small cold water tank in your roof) the its likely that the towel rail is on the primary circuit which heats the water in your cylinder for you. In that case it will get hot when either the hot water system or the heating system is calling for heat. Is that the sort of system you have?

Its unlikely with an open vented system that the towel rad will have a TRV on it - just two valves.

The big nut on the opposite corner to the bleed valve is exactly that - its to blank off an unused opening. Do NOT undo it unless you want to get wet.

Come back when you've checked the TRV operation as per previous post and we'll take this step by step.

Cheers

keystone

Oh - he's gone then?

banana-man_3

keystone, thank you very much for your advice.
unfortunately i was posting from work, as i dont yet have internet at home and couldnt check your posts. i will try this tonight.
so i need to take off the TRV and check the pin is free to move up and down?
i did take the plastic cover off on one of them last night (its an old style radiator, and the cover didnt have any numbers...when i unscrewed the cap, i noticed the pin you mention and surrounding it was a black dial with numbers on it. im pretty sure that was on like a number 1 (which would explain why it was cold!) but i didnt know the pin moved up and down, and i tried lightly to turn it a little, but that wasnt happening so i left it.
so should i push it down/pull it up and make sure it can move?
and also, you mention that i should leave the trv OFF and then open the valve on the other side 1.5 turns? thats confusing me...

once again, thank you very much, i feel like im going to get a result today!

banana-man_3

"Once you have ensured the TRV valves are clear to operate open the lockshield valves between one and one and a half turns and leave them be." this i understand and will do tonight.

"Leaving the TRV head OFF operate you heating system and tell us what happens." this i DONT understand...so i should turn the side that has the numbers off i.e. to zero - and then? what do you mean by operate your heating system?? sorry if im being really stupid.

one other thing - as per my last post, the rad in the hallway that i described (the old one with the plastic screw covers) it has these covers on both sides....and when i unscrewed them both, they both had the same black number dials and pins sticking out!!??

help!

keystone

banana-man wrote: »

keystone, thank you very much for your advice.
unfortunately i was posting from work, as i dont yet have internet at home and couldnt check your posts. i will try this tonight.

OK understand. You've only just caught me as I'm off out in a few minutes and will be working away until Frday so hopefully someone can help you further in the merantime.

and also, you mention that i should leave the trv OFF and then open the valve on the other side 1.5 turns? thats confusing me...

Sorry if I've misled you. The valves must be open for the water to flow. If you leave the TRV head off the valve then the internal spring will hold the valve open. Its a case of the head being PHYSICALLY off the valve not a case of the valve being switched off. If you've been adjusting the LSVs with abandon over the last day or so you'll have messed up the system balance so to try and bring some order back I suggest you open the LSVs by between 1 and 1½ turns from the closed position.

If this establishes flow then just put the heads back on the TRVs until you can get someone in to rebalance your system for you as it won' be operating at its best but at least you'll be warm.

If it doesn't work then turn off ALL radiators and open up each of those that are not in turn. That may kick start it for you but I think someone has already mentioned doing this.

In any case I think its a good investment to get someone to come out and explain to you exactly how the system you have works.

Cheers

keystone

banana-man wrote: »

"Leaving the TRV head OFF operate you heating system and tell us what happens." this i DONT understand...so i should turn the side that has the numbers off i.e. to zero - and then? what do you mean by operate your heating system?? sorry if im being really stupid.

See my post above. Take the thermostatic head off the radiator physically and leave it off so that the valve will be open.

one other thing - as per my last post, the rad in the hallway that i described (the old one with the plastic screw covers) it has these covers on both sides....and when i unscrewed them both, they both had the same black number dials and pins sticking out!!??

I'm starting to wonder what you really have got here. There is no sense putting thermostatic radiator valves on both ends of a sngle radiator. Can you get us a picture please? When you have taken i upload it to a picture hosting site like photobucket, imageshack or tinypic copy the url that the site gives you and post it back here removing the http bit. You need to remove the http bit as you do not (I think) have a high enough post count to enable you to post links directly.

Perhaps you also ought to be considering somone round who has some experience as suggested. This could take forever this way.

Cheers

gas4you

That sounds like a honeywell trv on each end, fitted with only decorator caps on both!

keystone

This thread's gone a bit quiet for someone in crisis!

Cheers