Thermostat in hallway: Has anyone covered their radiator with a blanket

_Jem_

NSG666 said:

I take it these measures have already been covered as it's MSE forum..

😂 Actually I only put the heating on when it really needs to be. When wearing two jumpers doesn't make a difference. 

Another_Level

 I will also mention I'm on district heating and that's another nightmare lol

Which scheme ? it really makes a difference consider chalk & cheese lol 

Rosa_Damascena

NSG666 said:

I take it these measures have already been covered as it's MSE forum..

Classic! The sad part is that some elderly people who are more vulnerable to hypothermia genuinely do go to extremes.

_Jem_

Another_Level said:

 I will also mention I'm on district heating and that's another nightmare lol

Which scheme ? it really makes a difference consider chalk & cheese lol 

It's EON while the price of heating is fine its the problems that come with it. 

coffeehound

_Jem_ said:

@coffeehound I can turn the lockshield off but then I'm going to be having the system running all the time. 

@_Jem_ I wasn't meaning to turn the radiator fully off.    Just meaning that it should therefore be possible to turn it down enough to slow the thermostat down

jamesd

_Jem_ said:

If you have covered your radiator with a blanket how does that work for you? 

Instead of a blanket how about reducing the air flow with ordinary kitchen foil? Easy to mould it around any radiator shape and if you have the type with two or more panels just blocking the gap in the middle can make quite a difference to the total heat output. The radiator is still going to get hot but if you're cutting the convection level it's not going to do as much warming of the space.

You can also use something as a barrier between the radiator and the thermostat so that heated air from the radiator encounters something that directs it away from the thermostat. A bit of foil and some sticky tape from floor to thermostat level might be handy for an experiment. Close to the radiator rather than the thermostat, it's the air rising from the radiator that you're trying to redirect.

It's also viable to cover the thermostat with clear plastic film held in place with sticky tape. This will partly isolate the thermostat from the temperature i the hall and increase the effect of the wall it's attached to, which would be a bit colder.

Plenty of other materials but for an experiment foil is cheap and readily available. 50p of experiments to try.

getmore4less

Moving the thermostat won't solve the underlying problem.

The hall gets too hot.

One solution to that is turn the hall heating off completely

That introduces a new problem that everywhere else will get too hot as the thermostat is in the hall.
The solution to that is move the thermostat to where you want to control the heat.
(that is possible without disrupting the existing wired stat which you probably can't do as it is rented.)

Sounds like the place is probably insulated enough you may get away with no hall heating if you can get the other rooms right


Leaving the stat where it is may be your simple option  for that to work the next step is can you get a bit of heating into the hall and then work towards a balance.

That has been discussed already 

One question not asked is do any of the radiators in the other rooms have TRV,  are they set too low?

Another less than perfect solution is there a door from the hall to the living room?


I think you need to change your starting point from too much heat in the hall  to no heat in the hall.
If you can get no heat then you can check your other rooms do heat up in a timely way.

When the other rooms  are OK then you can look at increasing the hall heating to get the heating to shut off

Then you can find a balance where the temp in the hall is comfortable and maybe a bit lower than the temp you want in the rooms you use

If you can't get the no hall heat then you have a problem

We have a stat in the hall and have that set to a couple of degrees below comfortable in the living space which has excess heating capacity so can get too warm sometimes, we open the door to the hall(a bit) and that shuts the heating off pretty quick

Bendy_House

It is a bit weird - why on earth this hallway rad cannot be tweaked right down to be only 'warm' is strange. I can only guess it's because it's getting too strong a flow from the other rads also being lockshielded too low, and this extra flow/pressure makes the washers in the hallway rad's valve too uncertain in operation - eg, any looseness in the washer and it'll move from 'shut' to 'too far open' in an instant, and not have the fine control you want. But I'm not sure even that makes sense since the hallway rad will be getting extra flow when other rads shut down in normal use.

Jem, something you can try. The hallway rad has two identical valves, yes? Ie - they are both 'manual' - they open and close only when the user adjusts them, but don't have any overriding control like a TRV? (By identical, I mean that the valve bodies are identical, but one might have a plastic pull-off cap, and the other a hand control knob).

Ok, shut one of them off fully so the rad cools down. When cool, open that valve again, and place your hands on the pipes feeding the valves - see which one heats up first. Cool - that's the 'flow'.

The flow is the one you'll now use to control that rad's temp. If that happens to be the one with the control knob, then great. If it isn't, then swap the caps around.

Ok, now open the 'lockshield' valve one turn from closed. Fully close the 'control' valve and then crack it open a half-turn. Leave the rad and see how hot it gets. If too hot, close that control valve up to a quarter-turn.

Rinse, repeat.

(The reason that you want the 'flow' to be the controlling vale, is because the flow of the water will be trying to push the washer open, and then you'll be tweaking it closed against the flow. That gives better control (in theory). At the other end - the 'return' - the water flow will be acting on the washer to try and close it, so if there's any looseness in that washer, you'll likely find that when it's almost shut off, it'll then 'snap' fully off. Ditto if you try and slowly open it - nothing will happen as the looseness is taken up, and then it'll suddenly snap open - and too far. Ergo, very poor control.

_Jem_

Thanks to everyone who has posted, you have given me alot of suggestions👍🙂