Mystery always on towel rails

Slinky

oniongirl said:

fezster said:

OP - you should have 2+ zone valves (silver boxes with small levers on them) - one for the HW (the unvented cylinder) and one or more for your radiators. If the HW or radiator circuits are "on", the levers will freely move fully - you can use this to check if the zone is calling for heat or not.

More than likely, the towel radiators are plumbed into your HW circuit so they warm up when the cylinder is heated. You need to check your HW schedule if you find the towel rads are always warm. Ideally, you have it come on once in the morning, which should meet your HW demands for the entire day, with a boost function to top up intraday if and when needed.  

Yes, I've rejigged the schedule already as they had the hot water coming on for three hours at 5am and then again at 3pm until 11pm! I really though I'd sussed it changing the schedule, but nope. 

Good luck with it. We had a Vaillant of a similar age with it's mighty fine control panel. OH can do rocket science, but my goodness programming that thing was a nightmare. We've moved now and need a new boiler, I'm insistent the next one must have much easier controls.

oniongirl

I'm afraid I haven't done as much investigation as I'd have liked. Honestly this whole thing is winding me up, and until we buy a tumble dryer, the always hot towel rails are actually a little helpful. 

The big power switch the says "heating" does indeed turn the boiler off.

I can't find any switch for an immersion heater despite our survey mentioning one. 

I think I will have to call someone in for a service and maybe ask if they can tell me what is going on because I can't figure it out. 

Nearlyold

Just a thought - Polished chrome is a poor emitter of heat, because of this you will often find that chrome towel radiators (which have no heat emitting fins either)  stay quite hot for some time after your standard white finned radiators have cooled down. If your heating is coming on regularly because your room stat is calling for heat could it be the towel radiators do not have sufficient time to cool down before the boiler is heating them up again.
Another thought is, has someone set your rads that have TRV's (if you have them) to a lower temperature than the room stat is set to, from the pics your towel rad has no TRV's.

oniongirl

Nearlyold said:

Just a thought - Polished chrome is a poor emitter of heat, because of this you will often find that chrome towel radiators (which have no heat emitting fins either)  stay quite hot for some time after your standard white finned radiators have cooled down. If your heating is coming on regularly because your room stat is calling for heat could it be the towel radiators do not have sufficient time to cool down before the boiler is heating them up again.
Another thought is, has someone set your rads that have TRV's (if you have them) to a lower temperature than the room stat is set to, from the pics your towel rad has no TRV's.

Interesting thought, but they were definitely boiling hot at 3am and heating had been off since 10pm (and hot water since 7pm). 

theoretica

I think there is definitely potential for a stuck switch or valve that isn't acting on the 'turn off' message.  If the main radiator system was put in at a different time to these, they might be on a separate loop - you might be able to find it by feeling for warm pipes around the tank and boiler when everything else is cold.

coffeehound

Never heard of it before but it's possible the previous owner wanted them warm 24/7 and has it wired up to continuously circulate water through the HW tank coil and around the TRs using the pump.

oniongirl

coffeehound said:

Never heard of it before but it's possible the previous owner wanted them warm 24/7 and has it wired up to continuously circulate water through the HW tank coil and around the TRs using the pump.

If that's the case they definitely didn't frequent this forum! Fingers crossed something somewhere is stuck and a nice person will come and fix it for me.

Jeepers_Creepers

PHOTOS!

twopenny

I'm probably a long way off here but my new immersion heater is so well insulated I only have to heat it for an hour once every two days and then it's still very warm.

If the TR's run off that it could be the reason.......but I have little idea of plumbing. Still working out switches and I've been here over a year.

Another thought, have you looked upwards over door frames for switches? I have one over each bathroom door for the extractor fan should it not stop. Never had a switchs near the ceiling before.

Useful to have the hot TR's for drying clothes in this weather though

oniongirl

Jeepers_Creepers said:

PHOTOS!

I didn't bother as I've given it up as a lost cause.

But for the sake of completeness:







With the HW valve, I did notice it wasn't fully seated in the "auto" position when taking pics so I've shoved it over, but no change in behaviour.

You can see the programmer is set to "auto" for both heating and hot water, and both of the indicator lights are out.

However when you look at the boiler display, it shows a solid (not flashing) symbol for both heating and hot water, which according to the manual means they are being requested.