Extra Large Radiators

Happy_Sloth

BUFF said:

Happy_Sloth said:

haha i get what you are saying, it's a stonking big room and while we are financially comfortable for the most part we arn't rich. 

Heating this house is our biggest challenge, it's currently costing us £450 a month for our gas and electric to say it's costly to heat is an understatement.   Which is enough to heat/light 2-3 smaller homes!  sufficed to say i'm unamused by the current gas/electric prices.  

That's an ancient radiator, what's the rest of the heating system like? If of similar vintage it may well pay over time to radically update the whole system now (especially if energy costs continue to rise). Depending upon what boiler, controls, other rads etc.you have the potential % savings could be huge (30%+). Plus increased comfort & you might be able to release wall space by using smaller but more efficient rads.
If you can't afford to pay cash upfront then perhaps add to mortage at low interest?

We updated the boiler about 3 years ago to a Worcester greenstar (I think it's the 8000.. its the biggest one they do for houses) and added modern radiators to 3 bedrooms that had no radiator whatsoever. We also added smart valves at that time so we could control when each radiator switched on. 

However most of the house has radiators around the same age, some slightly newer one or two i suspect are older.. the hall one is especially ancient but most of the rooms do have old style radiators of one variety or another, the only modern ones are the 3 we installed. 

We where planning on upgrading them as we move though each of the rooms to decorate but it sounds like it might be worth making it a priority?  It cost us around £300 a month for gas during the winter to power the CH.   

Bendy_House

Ok, your boiler is recent, so a modern condensing jobbie which will be pretty efficient. The only thing that prevents it from being as efficient as it could be, is the temp it's running at. For a condensing boiler to condense, the return water temp from the rads needs to be as low as possible, I think in the order of 50oC or less? If you have your boiler cranked up to make the rads 'piping' - which will likely be around 80oC - then the return temp will still be at, ooh, 65oC or more? Not very condensie.
But, if you turn your boiler flow temp down, then your house won't be warm enough.
Two solutions - one is to oversize your rads whenever you replace them, and then tweak the boiler temp down to suit, and the other is to insulate/draughtproof your home. Which is best? Correct, both. (Actually, insulating/d-proofing should obviously be THE priority...) 
Tbh, I don't think it's cost-effective to replace/upgrade rads JUST for a slight improvement, as each will be a £ew £undred, and will take years to recoup any benefit. So I would only replace rads if you NEED to, if they just aren't powerful enough, or are faulty. And, when you do replace them, go oversized - eg doubles instead of singles, additional fins, etc. Bear in mind that future heating systems, such as A/GSHPs, solar, etc, tend to supply less-than-hot water, so the rads need to be sized to extract enough heat at this lower temp for the room.
If you DO manage to effectively improve the insulation/draught of a room, then that is also effectively 'over-sizing' the current rad, which was obviously sized for the original, hard-to-heat room.

BUFF

Happy_Sloth said:

BUFF said:

Happy_Sloth said:

haha i get what you are saying, it's a stonking big room and while we are financially comfortable for the most part we arn't rich. 

Heating this house is our biggest challenge, it's currently costing us £450 a month for our gas and electric to say it's costly to heat is an understatement.   Which is enough to heat/light 2-3 smaller homes!  sufficed to say i'm unamused by the current gas/electric prices.  

That's an ancient radiator, what's the rest of the heating system like? If of similar vintage it may well pay over time to radically update the whole system now (especially if energy costs continue to rise). Depending upon what boiler, controls, other rads etc.you have the potential % savings could be huge (30%+). Plus increased comfort & you might be able to release wall space by using smaller but more efficient rads.
If you can't afford to pay cash upfront then perhaps add to mortage at low interest?

We updated the boiler about 3 years ago to a Worcester greenstar (I think it's the 8000.. its the biggest one they do for houses) and added modern radiators to 3 bedrooms that had no radiator whatsoever. We also added smart valves at that time so we could control when each radiator switched on. 

However most of the house has radiators around the same age, some slightly newer one or two i suspect are older.. the hall one is especially ancient but most of the rooms do have old style radiators of one variety or another, the only modern ones are the 3 we installed. 

We where planning on upgrading them as we move though each of the rooms to decorate but it sounds like it might be worth making it a priority?  It cost us around £300 a month for gas during the winter to power the CH.   

OK, so you have a modern, very efficient boiler if, as B_H says, it is set to run properly & actually condense most of the time. I assume that the controls were probably updated at the same time?
If so, then the potential savings from only changing rads will be much less but there still will be some to be made.
& again, as B_H said, when you do replace rads it makes sense to size them for the output on a heatpump in the future (& to release wall space consider K2/K3s & indeed, going vertical rather than horizontal).

Happy_Sloth

Bendy_House said:

Ok, your boiler is recent, so a modern condensing jobbie which will be pretty efficient. The only thing that prevents it from being as efficient as it could be, is the temp it's running at. For a condensing boiler to condense, the return water temp from the rads needs to be as low as possible, I think in the order of 50oC or less? If you have your boiler cranked up to make the rads 'piping' - which will likely be around 80oC - then the return temp will still be at, ooh, 65oC or more? Not very condensie.
But, if you turn your boiler flow temp down, then your house won't be warm enough.
Two solutions - one is to oversize your rads whenever you replace them, and then tweak the boiler temp down to suit, and the other is to insulate/draughtproof your home. Which is best? Correct, both. (Actually, insulating/d-proofing should obviously be THE priority...) 
Tbh, I don't think it's cost-effective to replace/upgrade rads JUST for a slight improvement, as each will be a £ew £undred, and will take years to recoup any benefit. So I would only replace rads if you NEED to, if they just aren't powerful enough, or are faulty. And, when you do replace them, go oversized - eg doubles instead of singles, additional fins, etc. Bear in mind that future heating systems, such as A/GSHPs, solar, etc, tend to supply less-than-hot water, so the rads need to be sized to extract enough heat at this lower temp for the room.
If you DO manage to effectively improve the insulation/draught of a room, then that is also effectively 'over-sizing' the current rad, which was obviously sized for the original, hard-to-heat room.

Looking at the boiler it seems to think the temp is set to 60? is this what you mean? 

BikingBud

Happy_Sloth said:

grumbler said:

Happy_Sloth said:

However the brackets are broken, it's somewhat hanging off the wall at the moment.  I don't want to take it off if i can't get it back on the wall i can't find the type of brackets it uses to replace them.  I've attached a picture incase anyone knows what type of bracket it is.  
 

Post a photo of the corresponding part at the back of the radiator.

ETA: and you can always replace a big radiator with two smaller ones.

The part is the bit you can see on the photo,  that part of the bracket i think somehow clipped onto the top of the radiator.  

The only think holding the radiator up now is the piping at the bottom and the fact that it's leaning on a couch haha.  

Having it leaning on a couch will not be helping in the efficient transfer of heat into the room.

Lots of advice here but I think you need to reset your thoughts on the use and layout and the installation perhaps consider a vertical radiator or two:

https://www.bestheating.com/milano-alpha-anthracite-vertical-designer-radiator-various-sizes-78651

DRP

I second the above regarding column radiators. It sounds like you have a period house, so column rads a re also available

https://www.mrcentralheating.co.uk/radiators/column-radiators/vertical-radiators?number_of_columns=32600

Bendy_House

Happy_Sloth said:

Bendy_House said:

Ok, your boiler is recent, so a modern condensing jobbie which will be pretty efficient. The only thing that prevents it from being as efficient as it could be, is the temp it's running at. For a condensing boiler to condense, the return water temp from the rads needs to be as low as possible, I think in the order of 50oC or less? If you have your boiler cranked up to make the rads 'piping' - which will likely be around 80oC - then the return temp will still be at, ooh, 65oC or more? Not very condensie.
But, if you turn your boiler flow temp down, then your house won't be warm enough.
Two solutions - one is to oversize your rads whenever you replace them, and then tweak the boiler temp down to suit, and the other is to insulate/draughtproof your home. Which is best? Correct, both. (Actually, insulating/d-proofing should obviously be THE priority...) 
Tbh, I don't think it's cost-effective to replace/upgrade rads JUST for a slight improvement, as each will be a £ew £undred, and will take years to recoup any benefit. So I would only replace rads if you NEED to, if they just aren't powerful enough, or are faulty. And, when you do replace them, go oversized - eg doubles instead of singles, additional fins, etc. Bear in mind that future heating systems, such as A/GSHPs, solar, etc, tend to supply less-than-hot water, so the rads need to be sized to extract enough heat at this lower temp for the room.
If you DO manage to effectively improve the insulation/draught of a room, then that is also effectively 'over-sizing' the current rad, which was obviously sized for the original, hard-to-heat room.

Looking at the boiler it seems to think the temp is set to 60? is this what you mean? 

Yes, that would seem to be. In which case the flow is at a nice lowish level already, and I would hope the return will therefore be at around 50oC, so a fair amount of condensing taking place.

Can you confirm how you see that 60oC reading? Photo? 

60oC is "I can't keep my hand on this rad for more than a few seconds" hot, and I suspect (pretty sure) that the declared output of these original rads would have been based on a higher supply temp than that, probably more like 80oC. That's YELP!

Happy_Sloth

Bendy_House said:

Happy_Sloth said:

Bendy_House said:

Ok, your boiler is recent, so a modern condensing jobbie which will be pretty efficient. The only thing that prevents it from being as efficient as it could be, is the temp it's running at. For a condensing boiler to condense, the return water temp from the rads needs to be as low as possible, I think in the order of 50oC or less? If you have your boiler cranked up to make the rads 'piping' - which will likely be around 80oC - then the return temp will still be at, ooh, 65oC or more? Not very condensie.
But, if you turn your boiler flow temp down, then your house won't be warm enough.
Two solutions - one is to oversize your rads whenever you replace them, and then tweak the boiler temp down to suit, and the other is to insulate/draughtproof your home. Which is best? Correct, both. (Actually, insulating/d-proofing should obviously be THE priority...) 
Tbh, I don't think it's cost-effective to replace/upgrade rads JUST for a slight improvement, as each will be a £ew £undred, and will take years to recoup any benefit. So I would only replace rads if you NEED to, if they just aren't powerful enough, or are faulty. And, when you do replace them, go oversized - eg doubles instead of singles, additional fins, etc. Bear in mind that future heating systems, such as A/GSHPs, solar, etc, tend to supply less-than-hot water, so the rads need to be sized to extract enough heat at this lower temp for the room.
If you DO manage to effectively improve the insulation/draught of a room, then that is also effectively 'over-sizing' the current rad, which was obviously sized for the original, hard-to-heat room.

Looking at the boiler it seems to think the temp is set to 60? is this what you mean? 

Yes, that would seem to be. In which case the flow is at a nice lowish level already, and I would hope the return will therefore be at around 50oC, so a fair amount of condensing taking place.

Can you confirm how you see that 60oC reading? Photo? 

60oC is "I can't keep my hand on this rad for more than a few seconds" hot, and I suspect (pretty sure) that the declared output of these original rads would have been based on a higher supply temp than that, probably more like 80oC. That's YELP!

Ooh good question....  Actually the number i read appears to change so i suspect it's the "Current Heat" rather than the "Setting"

What i can confirm is the radiators even when turned to max are NEVER yelp hot,  i warm my hands on them all the time, they are never uncomfortable to hold.  

FreeBear

Happy_Sloth said:  What i can confirm is the radiators even when turned to max are NEVER yelp hot,  i warm my hands on them all the time, they are never uncomfortable to hold. 

Most radiator specifications are based on a water temperature of 70°C and an assumed room temperature of 20°C - The difference is referred to as the Delta T or Δt - If you are running at a lower Δt, the size of the radiator needs to be increased by some 12-15% for each 5°C drop.

Bendy_House

Happy_Sloth said:

Ooh good question....  Actually the number i read appears to change so i suspect it's the "Current Heat" rather than the "Setting"

What i can confirm is the radiators even when turned to max are NEVER yelp hot,  i warm my hands on them all the time, they are never uncomfortable to hold.  

Good news - your boiler is running at pretty much its most efficient level.

Bad news - your house is cold as a result... :-)

The solution is larger rads so they'll output 'more' (or the same) but with a lower supply temp. BUT, not worth doing unless you have to anyway - the replacement cost of rads will outweigh any energy savings for a good while.

As and when you do replace them, then go over-sized as FB suggests.