Misaligned radiators

andy1988

Hi all,

I'm in the process of refurbishing a house before I move in. There's a lot to do and a lot to buy which has created a severe headache, especially for someone who likes to get the best possible price for anything but also doesn't want to suffer poor quality "buy cheap, buy twice".

A word of warning to anyone refurbishing their house: after researching various items including radiators, showers, kitchen units, taps, etc...I discovered that you can buy exactly the same product for say £90 on eBay, £120 on Amazon or £170 from a variety of "outlet" or "trade" websites. Merely paying more to profit to the retailer you're buying from. This probably isn't news to most of you, but subtle differences in specification could lead anyone to believe they are buying a different product, when in fact they are buying exactly the same item in the same box from the same manufacturer.

So, this leads me onto my radiator issue. Having purchased 5x vertical bar style radiators from 2 different suppliers they all seem to have arrived with misaligned bars to various extents. I compared this to an "expensive" £300 radiator purchased by someone else several years ago to find their bars misaligned as well. So I'd like to think I didn't fall foul of "bought cheap to buy twice".

The purpose of my post is:
1 - raise awareness of the fact that the same product (especially radiators) can come with different branding and at wildly different prices for the same product.
2 - ask a very random question...if anyone on here has bar style radiators have you noticed them to be misaligned or can you recommend a perfect manufacturer? I could go on forever returning and re-ordering various products only to find that they all have this "character flaw".

You might deem the issue pedantic, but there are a few viewing/seating positions where such misalignment is glaringly obvious. Plus I'm a bit of a perfectionist as I expect many of you are.

I attach an example of the perfectly aligned product. Note 3 manufacturers produce the same misalignment issues.
I can't find a way to upload the photos I took of the alignment but the best way to describe it is imagine each bar mounted slightly higher or lower than the one next to it (a couple of mm), exacerbated by the top of some of the bars being slightly raised on the left.

Thanks,
Andy