Plumbers and Heating - Should I leave the TRV off one Radiator in the house?

Bendy_House

sho_me_da_money said:

Bendy_House said:

If you are planning to tweak any lockshields, and you are doing the 'first note down how open it is' job, if you find that a lockshield is much more than - ooh - a couple? of turns open, then there's a fair chance that it just hasn't been balanced at all, but just left nicely 'open' by the plumber.

So there is a problem with knowing the original position of the lockshield side.

- The radiators in Bedroom 1, 2 and 3 were removed 6 months back and the previous rad lockshield positions were not noted
- The radiator in the living room was replaced about 2 months back and the previous rad lockshield position was not noted
- The old radiator in the hallway is the only one that I will be able to take a note of the position of before replacement.

On Thursday, an Engineer will:

- Install Bedroom 1, 2 and 3 radiators
- Replacing hallway radiator and install a new one
- Replacing existing TRV and Lockshield valves on the vertical rad with the new double lockshield valves (per notes above)

The only 2 radiators that will not be touched and/or replaced are the kitchen AND bathroom rad. These are the old style rads but I am not interested in replacing these we are focussed on renovating Living room, hallway and the three bedrooms.

How do you propose this balancing occurs given the above?

I also have some Sentinel X100 inhibitor. Would you recommend this is poured in when all rads are installed?

As Apod says. All a 'lockshield' valve actually is, is a normal manual valve with its knobbly head taken off and replaced by a cap that doesn't turn the spindle underneath. It's used to balance the rad, and is then left alone. The rad's heat output is then controlled by the other valve, either a manual one or a TRV.

In practice, you may find that the designer anthracite-finished valves for your designer rad are identical to each other. That's certainly what I found - they both have 'adjusting' heads, so if somebody didn't know, they could easily turn the lockshield by mistake. But, hey, they look good :-)
If you can get anthracite manual valves - one normal and one proper lockshield (ie you have to take off its head to get to turn the spindle), then great.

It doesn't matter that you don't know what the old LSs were set at, since you are having new rads fitted. The plumber should balance these as a matter of procedure. If the new rad sizes were different o the old, then some tweaking would be needed in any case.

Yes, X100 should also be added, just in case the current level isn't very high (and will be less once these old rads are drained...)

Do you have a magnetic filter fitted on the return pipe to the boiler? If not, perhaps asking for one of these too - an easy job since the system will be drained down.

Bendy_House

I'd tell the plumber; 'This rad heated up real hot before the rest. This one was the slowest to heat up...' and stuff like that.

sho_me_da_money

Thanks Bendy

And yes I do have a filter that is finally installed on the return pipe. You have already commented on my post about that here - https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/78801232#Comment_78801232

Bendy_House

sho_me_da_money said:

Thanks Bendy

And yes I do have a filter that is finally installed on the return pipe. You have already commented on my post about that here - https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/78801232#Comment_78801232

Oops!

fezster

sho_me_da_money said:

How do you propose this balancing occurs given the above?

I also have some Sentinel X100 inhibitor. Would you recommend this is poured in when all rads are installed?

Honestly, balancing is not difficult, it's just very time consuming to do it properly - especially if you have a sub optimal layout (eg. undersized pipework to some rads or an unusual layout).

Most heating engineers will set the lockshield to "roughly what they think is right" based on experience and measuring flow and return temps by hand. Nothing particularly wrong with this, as it will work a lot of the time, but if you want to balance your entire system properly, you need to know the order in which radiators are connected to your boiler (closest to farthest) and make incremental adjustments over a period of time to fine tune them. And as someone said previously, use pipe clamp thermometers to measure the temperature differential (you'll never get it 100%, but as a guide you want approx. 20 degree differential for a condensing boiler).

You will know your heating system better than any engineer who is on site for a few hours. You can spend a small amount of time each day over a period of a week (or weeks) to fine tune it until it is all heating up uniformly.

Apodemus

fezster said:

will know your heating system better than any engineer who is on site for a few hours. You can spend a small amount of time each day over a period of a week (or weeks) to fine tune it until it is all heating up uniformly.

This is good advice. And if you've done it yourself, you can adjust it all yourself later on if things change.

sho_me_da_money

Hi All, I just wanted to update you that I have had 2 of the 4 radiators installed (hallway and one bedroom) and have installed a smart TRV on them.

I have no idea about schedules and optimal temperatures for the house but I have configured the following temps and timings of the house.

06:00 - 09:30 - 20 degrees
09:30 - 17:00 - 19 degrees
17:00 - 22:00 - 20 degrees
22:00 - 06:00 - 18 degrees
.....rinse and repeat each day


Any thoughts feedback on this schedule/temp setting?

sho_me_da_money

Further to my last comment, I learned something interesting about the Smart TRVs I have installed.

When I set Bedroom 1s Smart TRV to 21 degrees, it sends and instruction to the boiler, turns it on and starts getting hot. All other radiators in the house stay cold and only Bedroom 1 gets hot until 21 degrees is hit.

This begs a fundamental question for me:

If the entire house i.e. all radiators are configured with a smart TRV, what the heck is a Thermostat unit needed for? I literally see no reason for it as you can set schedules time/temp settings per TRV and every TRV is capable of calling the boiler to turn on.

Any thoughts?

Jeepers_Creepers

sho_me_da_money said:

Hi All, I just wanted to update you that I have had 2 of the 4 radiators installed (hallway and one bedroom) and have installed a smart TRV on them.

I have no idea about schedules and optimal temperatures for the house but I have configured the following temps and timings of the house.

06:00 - 09:30 - 20 degrees
09:30 - 17:00 - 19 degrees
17:00 - 22:00 - 20 degrees
22:00 - 06:00 - 18 degrees
.....rinse and repeat each day


Any thoughts feedback on this schedule/temp setting?

Seems quite typical. Perhaps 19oC is a tad high for I presume is an empty house during the day? There may be some slight savings to be had by lowering this to, say, 18oC - that's a temp that'll allow the hoosie to get back up to 20oC quickly enough for the 5pm return-home time.
Ditto 18oC overnight. Why would you want it that warm? 16oC should be fine - chill off the air, and house ready to be warmed up for the morning start.
A general principle - it is more energy efficient to only heat a house when it's needed. Some folk think it's better to keep it 'mild' at all times, so less energy is used to then get it 'warm'. Yes, it'll get warm more quickly from 'mild', but the unneeded 'mild' bit is costing you.

fezster

If you have Smart TRV's on every single radiator, then no thermostat is required.

In some locations (eg. a hallway radiator behind a radiator cover), the TRV may not be able to sense the ambient temperature correctly, so some systems like Drayton Wiser allow you to use a wall mounted stat to monitor the temperature in that location.

Other locations may have multiple radiators - you can usually assign them together as a single zone and either use one of the TRV's to sense the temperature, or again, use a wall mounted stat instead.

Remember, if there are any radiators without a Smart TRV, they will usually get hot regardless of which Smart TRV is calling for heat. They may have a normal TRV which shuts them down.

In all cases, it is advisable to have an ABV as systems such as EvoHome and Wiser can sometimes fire the boiler even when all TRV's are shut down and / or your boiler may require a minimum flow rate through it, in which case a single radiator calling for heat may not be sufficient to fulfil that minimum flow rate.