Radiator Covers - Heat blockers?

Lumabones

Hello money savers! Bought first house in May, now the cold weather is here, we're discovering which parts of the house are colder.

The previous owners left a "lovely" bright pink radiator (painted with emulsion!!!) in one of the bedrooms. After so much decorating and repairing other parts of the house (it was a reposession so has needed a good bit of work..), we decided to just buy a nice radiator cover to hide the neon radiator, to save the stress of trying to strip the paint off/repainting/or replacing, since it still works pretty good.

However, I have noticed that despite the radiator being very hot, the room always seems to be a bit chilly at times. The house in general does seem take a lot of heating, it's been so neglected over the years we're probably missing gaps somewhere.



I'd also like to note that this room is on the semi-detached side, and I do here they are generally a bit colder with not having neighbours, as our living room seems to be cold a lot too, but I don't have much to compare really, as I've always lived in a terraced prior.



Does anyone have any experience with radiator covers blocking heat? It isn't one with the reflector. Just a bog standard MDF cover that I painted myself.

matelodave

Heat from radiators is by convection and radiation - so convected heat rises and circulates warm air around the room and radiated heat is the heat that you can feel when you stand close to a radiator.

By sticking a cover over it you've restricted the flow of air around the rad so it can't circulate around the room as well as it would from an uncovered rad and the cover has also reduced the amount of radiated heat as well. I guess you'll lose about 25% efficiency, possibly more

Lumabones

Yikes! Thankfully I haven't attached the cover to the wall, so I'll try lifting it away and see if there is a difference. A little annoying as I was using it as a shelf. Would a rad reflector help with the cover?

nickcc

Have the same problem with our bedroom rad. I've now bought a bottom fitting radfan so the warm air is blown out the top radiator cover vent holes. These fans are temperature controlled and only come on when the rad is warm so no problem with it running constantly or when we are trying to sleep. One thing you need to do if you have a radiator cover is to remove the thermostatic rad valve if fitted as the valve will cut off the hot water to the rad too soon. Incidentally I can't remove the radiator cover as my Wife won't let me