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      01-13-2016, 01:54 AM   #1
Mrklaw
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How do I persuade my central heating to heat all my rooms?

Wife is rightly pissed off that the bedrooms are often cold, when the lounge is lovely and toasty. I assume this is because the thermostat says the lounge is warm and cuts off the hearing before the hot water in the radiators can get further around to the bedrooms.

So there must be ways to persuade it to not do that?

All our radiators except one have thermostatic valves on. The one that doesn't in is the lounge along with the thermostat (we have two rads in the lounge).

I've tried turning all the thermostatic valves downstairs as low as possible, and the ones upstairs as high as possible but no joy. should I turn the 'non-controlled' radiator down?

Thermostat is a nest but it's fixed to the wall. Worst case I can move it and use a stand but it is very convenient there and if I put it in the hall it'll just assume we're out of the house and turn off
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      01-13-2016, 02:00 AM   #2
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mrklaw View Post
Wife is rightly pissed off that the bedrooms are often cold, when the lounge is lovely and toasty. I assume this is because the thermostat says the lounge is warm and cuts off the hearing before the hot water in the radiators can get further around to the bedrooms.

So there must be ways to persuade it to not do that?

All our radiators except one have thermostatic valves on. The one that doesn't in is the lounge along with the thermostat (we have two rads in the lounge).

I've tried turning all the thermostatic valves downstairs as low as possible, and the ones upstairs as high as possible but no joy. should I turn the 'non-controlled' radiator down?

Thermostat is a nest but it's fixed to the wall. Worst case I can move it and use a stand but it is very convenient there and if I put it in the hall it'll just assume we're out of the house and turn off
Install a 2nd Nest Thermo in your bedroom.

They auto link up.

(Or should do)

Btw heating on? It's not even cold yet.
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      01-13-2016, 02:17 AM   #3
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Try whacking the thermostat up to max so that it doesn't shut off when lounge gets up to temp just to check that the heat does circulate around the whole house.

Get a rad stat put on both lounge rads & take the stat off the bathroom one (iirc, 1 rad should always be stat free). Then get the individual rad heats balanced on the stats once you are happy with all the room temps.
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      01-13-2016, 02:20 AM   #4
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Do the bedroom radiators get hot? If not you need to close back the outlet valves on some of the other radiators.
The heating should work better if the thermostat and radiator without a thermostatic valve are in the hall.
Either that or you're bedroom radiators are too small.
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      01-13-2016, 03:09 AM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mrklaw
Wife is rightly pissed off that the bedrooms are often cold, when the lounge is lovely and toasty. I assume this is because the thermostat says the lounge is warm and cuts off the hearing before the hot water in the radiators can get further around to the bedrooms.

So there must be ways to persuade it to not do that?

All our radiators except one have thermostatic valves on. The one that doesn't in is the lounge along with the thermostat (we have two rads in the lounge).

I've tried turning all the thermostatic valves downstairs as low as possible, and the ones upstairs as high as possible but no joy. should I turn the 'non-controlled' radiator down?

Thermostat is a nest but it's fixed to the wall. Worst case I can move it and use a stand but it is very convenient there and if I put it in the hall it'll just assume we're out of the house and turn off
I have exactly the same setup as you, Nest in lounge with no TRV's on lounge rads, and me bedrooms heat up fine.

So maybe something wrong with your system, have you tried bleeding the rads? And as above whack the thermostat right up to check the bedroom rads actually get hot.
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      01-13-2016, 03:58 AM   #6
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the bedroom ones do get hot if the temp is turned up. Just that it seems to turn off too quickly. I like the idea of moving the non stat-controlled radiator out of the lounge but we don't have rads in the bathroom so it'd need to go in a bedroom.
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      01-13-2016, 04:06 AM   #7
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Alternatively you can install a bypass valve to the system which effectively opens if all radiators shut down while the stat is still demanding heat

http://www.honeywelluk.com/products/...-Bypass-Valve/
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      01-13-2016, 07:21 AM   #8
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What pipe work do you have - 15/10/8mm?

I moved into a house with microbore 10mm a few years back and it's much more sensitive to the rads being balanced properly; I bought an infrared temperature gauge to do this myself and then fitted TRVs to all rads.

Finally, try to look at moving the stat into the hall - did this at my old house and it worked wonders, hall is cold so the stat is set lower but TRVs then do their job elsewhere. You may be able to just drill through the wall?
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      01-13-2016, 07:54 AM   #9
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Sounds like a balancing issue.
We have a similar issue where there can be little heating in one of the bedrooms in the extension and full heating on in downstairs extension room (both thermostats on full) . If I fiddle with the outlet (opposite end to the thermostat valve) then upstairs one is very hot and downstairs goes cold!!!
Bit of a faff to get it right. if you're not sure best to get a plumber in to balance them properly.
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      01-13-2016, 08:03 AM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkG335 View Post
What pipe work do you have - 15/10/8mm?

I moved into a house with microbore 10mm a few years back and it's much more sensitive to the rads being balanced properly; I bought an infrared temperature gauge to do this myself and then fitted TRVs to all rads.

Finally, try to look at moving the stat into the hall - did this at my old house and it worked wonders, hall is cold so the stat is set lower but TRVs then do their job elsewhere. You may be able to just drill through the wall?
Its a nest so it is wireless. I can move it but it'll then need a USB charger plugged into it and propped up on a stand (all doable). Downside is the 'auto away' which turns the heat down when it detects you aren't around - that'll kick in all the time if we're in the living room. But I can disable that and just use the app when we're out so no big deal if that would be more suitable.

Pipes appear to be 10mm
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      01-13-2016, 10:57 AM   #11
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I was just about to put up a thread about CH so see above for help on mine.

It may be two or three things here

1. The radiators upstairs have never worked well

Answer - You may have undersized your CH boiler and theres not enough capacity to heat the whole house. End of story sorry!

Answer However you may have the boiler thermostat set too low so its not able to get enough warmth into all the radiators eg if its set to 60 degrees it may be possible to increase it to 80 degrees by a simple turn of a dial.

2. They once worked but now not so well

- You may have a blockage in the system perhaps at a manifold and as kind people above suggest, get the system flushed through after putting in anti rust solvent - presumably via a competent professional

Hope all our contributions help a little to analyse problem.

Last edited by Tom Tallon; 01-13-2016 at 11:13 AM.. Reason: Spelling
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      01-13-2016, 12:06 PM   #12
Mrklaw
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I hope the boiler is the right size, it was only fitted a few years ago, as were the rads (on old pipes though)

Just checked and the temperature is set to 82c for the heating (50c for the hot water)

possibly blocked but they do work sometimes. I'm leaning towards badly balanced - might get someone in to take a look, and possibly swap the 'unlocked' one to a different room
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      01-13-2016, 12:07 PM   #13
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You just need to balance the radiators.

Bleed them and then If some are hotter than others you need to adjust the TRV valves as well as the normal valve to ensure the hot water is getting to the entire system. You only need the the valve open a quarter of a turn if it's piping hot and then you'll get more water flow to the cooler rads.

My boiler is upstairs so I have the rads on that floor nearly shut off and the ones downstairs more open. They are all too hot to touch - a meat thermometer will tell you how well balanced they are.
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      01-13-2016, 12:53 PM   #14
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I've got a couple of rooms that always seem colder than the others even though we have trv's and I've made sure all the rads are balanced. It's probably due to more external walls in those rooms and older sash windows. I've been thinking of upgrading all the valves to the wireless ones from lightwaverf as then I can place the colder rooms into their own zone have more control over the heating certain parts of the house. Has anyone tried them or have most people gone for Nest or Hive?
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      01-13-2016, 01:49 PM   #15
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I'm a CH engineer and it's a common problem with roomstats. Your room heats up with that radiator in and the stat clicks the whole heating off - that's why in newer houses they have two zones (One for upstairs and one for down).

A couple of ways round this is obviously turn your roomstat up and find an optimum between heating upstairs and not overheating downstairs. Turning your thermostatic rad valves down will help this.

Also ensuring your roomstat isn't in a bad place (E.g. near a radiator, or the opposite near a window/door), wireless ones can help with this as you can move them to the room you use most.

There are other options to controlling - Honeywell do their EvoSystem which will allow you to control the temperature of each room. This would solve your problem of cold bedrooms. http://connectedproducts.honeywelluk...ohome/plan.php

Balancing the radiators wouldn't help this situation as the demand for heat is clicking off before the other rooms get warm. Balancing only helps when other rads are getting hot and others are cool/luke warm when a demand for heat from the stat is being called.
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      01-13-2016, 02:58 PM   #16
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So that's what I've tried to do - although the thermostat is by the door to our living room which sounds not ideal?

I've turned all downstairs TRVs down as low as possible to try and push more heat upstairs. But the living room still gets warm quickly so it shuts off. I'll try almost turning the uncontrolled radiator off (just open a little bit) if that will help? Basically make the radiators in the living room takes longer to warm the room, giving the rest of the house more of the share of the water
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      01-13-2016, 03:14 PM   #17
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mrklaw View Post
So that's what I've tried to do - although the thermostat is by the door to our living room which sounds not ideal?

I've turned all downstairs TRVs down as low as possible to try and push more heat upstairs. But the living room still gets warm quickly so it shuts off. I'll try almost turning the uncontrolled radiator off (just open a little bit) if that will help? Basically make the radiators in the living room takes longer to warm the room, giving the rest of the house more of the share of the water
Turning the uncontrolled radiator down would slow the flow down to it, but even so it will probably just get hot as quick as it's still getting flow to it. However it may work, it's hard to say without trying. As long as that room is getting hotter than the rest you'll never get round the stat clicking off unless your crank it right up.

It sounds to me that your roomstat isn't in the right room, and ideally wants moving. Your other option would be to put a TRV in the living room so that it shuts the living room rad when it's hot enough but not enough to click the stat off (The isn't ideally as your not meant to have a TRV on the room with the stat in)
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      01-13-2016, 05:12 PM   #18
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If when the system first starts up, the lounge and other downstairs radiators get hot before upstairs rads start to warm at all, it is a balancing issue. This can easily be done yourself, search google "how to balance a central heating system" to read several good guides.

My experience is the younger generation of plumbers do less of it and it is best doing it yourself
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      01-13-2016, 05:31 PM   #19
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As above I would start by getting a plumber in to balance the system. Can take some time to do this properly but well worth it. Out of interest have you bled the rads? if so is water clear or contaminated?
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      01-14-2016, 01:29 AM   #20
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You can see if your system needs balancing by running your heating (so turn your roomstat up to max). If all your rads get hot then the system won't need balancing. You have to remember a radiator further away from your boiler will take a little longer for heat to come than one right near.

If they do all get hot then I think it's a case of your roomstat clicking off too soon (as that room is warmer) before the rest of the house is warm.
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      01-14-2016, 08:45 AM   #21
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Step one - check if radiators needed bleeding. Turns out two of the rads upstairs needing bleeding a lot. Actually had to repressurise the boiler twice during that. Turned the heat up and all radiators got hot. Still need to check if they need balancing or if the TRVs will be enough.
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      01-14-2016, 12:18 PM   #22
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