Central Heating & TRV Questions

chirpychick

Hi

Need some advice before winter and the new addition to the family

We live in a 2 bed mid terrace, open plan kitchen and lounge

fully pumped central heating system via Thorn Olympic wall hung boiler (yes i know its old lol no chance of replacing for a few years yet)!

The thermostat is in the living room.

the living room is always nice and warm (sometimes even gets too hot), but the hallway and upstairs is always colder, much colder (always have the door in the living room shut).

Therefore my husbands plan to improve things is to move the thermostat to the hallway and fit 5 TRV's to all rooms apart from the hallway.

Should this help to maintain a better temperature in each room?

And also he is a very good and keen DIY man, is this something that he would be able to do himself or would we need to ensure we had a plumber out?

Any ideas on cost?

Thank you in advance

gas4you

You need to find out why the other rooms are not getting warm enough first.

It could be that the other radiators are not big enough to heat the rooms, in which case just fitting TRV's would be a waste of money.

chirpychick

My husband said that the thermostat is in the living room and we always have the living room door shut so he thinks that the thermostat shuts the heating off when downstairs is warm so before the hall/upstairs gets to the right temperature.
So he thinks by having the thermostat in the hall and fitting TRV's, it will heat the entire house to the correct temperature before shutting off whilst not overheating downstairs.

keystone

So he's satisfied himself then that the rads are not undersized (as G4U indicated), that the system is properly balanced as it is and that there isn't any form of blockage in the pipework?

Cheers

chirpychick

I think the radiators are definitely appropriately sized in the bedrooms and bathroom, we aren't 100% sure about the one in the hallway (and there isn't room for a bigger one).

We are pretty sure the system is working properly and that there are no blockages as all the radiators do get hot all over and we have had it all serviced etc this year also.

One thing that concerns me personally if I am honest is that the double glazing has blown in the bathroom and one of the bedrooms and personally I think this could be a contributing factor to how cold it is in the hall and upstairs? The loft hatch is also in the hallway but he insulated that last year and it made no difference. We also put up a door curtain in front of the front door to see if that helped, we made sure there were no droughts coming in from there also.

T_T_2

chirpychick wrote: »

I think the radiators are definitely appropriately sized

Can I just ask what you are basing this on? Is this a gut feeling or have you actually done the BTU/kW calculations? If you haven't done the calculations then a quick google will bring up a radiator sizing calculator.

keystone

So take the living room rad out of the equation by shutting down the valve on the flow side completely. What happens to the rest of the house then when the system next fires up?

Cheers

chirpychick

T_T wrote: »

Can I just ask what you are basing this on? Is this a gut feeling or have you actually done the BTU/kW calculations? If you haven't done the calculations then a quick google will bring up a radiator sizing calculator.

It was guess work, but thank you ever so much because we have just used the calculator (after measuring rooms and lots of maths) we have discovered our guess work was right, all rooms are perfect but the radiator in the hallway is way under in BTU.

So what do we do now?? :eek:

keystone

chirpychick wrote: »

So what do we do now?? :eek:

Post 7. Rinse and repeat. Then consider sourcing a bigger BTU rad for the hall. Physical size and BTU aren't necessarily related particularly when you fit a new high efficiency rad in place of an old inefficient one.

Cheers

T_T_2

As Keystone says you need to be certain as to what the impact of the hall rad is. What kind of radiator do you have installed at the moment, is it a single panel, single panel convector (fins), double panel, double panel single convector or a double panel with a double convector? Starting from the left of my list to the right the BTU output will be progressively higher. If your rad is anything other than a double panel with a double convector then you can replace it with a rad that will give out more BTU without being any larger in terms of width and height.

If on the other hand your radiator is a double panel with a double convector your only way of increasing BTU is to replace with a dimensionally larger radiator.

Avoriaz

Have you checked the radiator valves (both sides) in the colder rooms to see if they are fully open?

Someone may have deliberately or accidentally balanced the system so that the hall and upstairs are colder than the living room.

Have you checked the points that Keystone queried?

keystone wrote: »

So he's satisfied himself then that the rads are not undersized (as G4U indicated), that the system is properly balanced as it is and that there isn't any form of blockage in the pipework?

Cheers

Rebalancing the system may solve your problem, although TRVs are generally a good idea and easy to install for a competent DIYer.