Hello and welcome to my blog.
My first article will start not with a tech one, as you've noticed from the title, but more of a mechanical? I guess! Regardless I will post random stuff about bugs & fixes, and problems that I encounter in my day to day life.
Today's topic is radiators, or more specifically, the noise coming from them.
This has been an ongoing situation for me, since I moved in this house, about 3 years ago. I'm renting the property, so all the small repairs I need to deal with myself.
Note: Boiler is quite recently installed also, and it is Bosch make, but I believe it might be too powerful for our setup.
Ok so the problem is hissing sound coming from the radiators. Like water constantly flowing at high pressure through the pipes.
Btw, I'm no expert in plumbing, so this is just my input of how I manged to reduce this annoying noise. Anything that you will read, you can try own risk, as I did, lol. Much of it is trial and error anyway.
So only recently I've managed to reduce the noise to 20%, I would say. But I'm not certain if some noise should exist, in any circumstance.
I'm just gonna go through the steps I took, now, and believe me I tried in all the possible ways and none of them worked like these ones.
So first, you're going to need an infrared thermometer, which sell really cheap nowadays, thank God. I would get the one that has baby bottle measurement one though, so you'd be able to measure almost any surface, that way, hopefully.
Then you're going to need pliers, unless your radiators have manual valves, like mine.
The way you operate them is clockwise turns the flow down (cold) and anticlockwise opens the flow (hotter).
Your setup might be different from mine, but I'm just gonna present mine.
We have one condensing combi boiler (heats water for sink and the radiators).
It is put in eco mode, which means that water heats up only when you need it. That way it saves more energy. It takes a few seconds to heat up, but I'm willing to wait for the extra cash in my pocket.
There are 3 radiators with TRV (thermostatic radiator valve) installed, 2 of them installed the wrong way, which I will get back to, in a bit. And 3 more with just plain radiator valves.
Because two of them are installed the wrong way (TRV work only on the inlet) because of terrible plumbers, what happens is sometimes the pipes started to vibrate so much, you'd hear a hammering noise in the pipes like the boiler is going to blow up.
That's how stupid they installed them, now there is absolutely no use for them. Unless your intention is to destroy the boiler.
So how do I know two are faulty? I used the thermometer, when the boiler starts, and water starts to flow through your radiator whichever pipe end indicates a higher temperature means that there is the input? (inlet) valve.
So two TRV were on the outlet pipes. What I did to fix the banging noise is turning them all the way up (anticlockwise) and then just a quarter of a turn back down (clockwise) just a slight decrease from the maximum.
Then, at the actual inlet valve I've turned it completely off (clockwise) and then almost another quarter of a turn anticlockwise to permit the flow of the water, but not too much.
I've done the same with the other radiator, but because they are situated in different rooms, one is further away from the boiler than the other. This one is probably going to need to be turned on to half of a quarter, or to a full turn, you need to see how hot the radiator gets.
I set my boiler for 65 degrees to prevent legionnaire's disease, look it up, it is very important. Then I used the thermometer again to check the temperature of the inlet and outlet of those two radiators.
The readings were 58.8 degrees celsius on the inlet and 40.4 degrees for the outlet (TRV) for the closest one, which I didn't mind, because it was the kitchen and it gets warm from cooking anyway. Then I moved to the second faulty TRV. This is the one before the furthest away line from the boiler. On this one I got, as I'm writing, 52.4 inlet and 42.5 degrees outlet (faulty TRV).
Basically, what I would want is to have around 54 degrees max going out of that faulty one. Otherwise my boiler won't enter in condensing mode.
So, because it is that low, I'm going to release a bit more of the inlet, turning it less than a quarter of a turn. Just so that it heats up the room a bit more, as this is one of the bedrooms and the bed reads 18.3 degrees, currently. But because I'm the type of person that spends most of the time (at least during winter) in bed, I want it warmer.
Now I have the third TRV (and the only one installed correctly, on inlet). This one is installed in the second bedroom. I've turned the dial to number 3.5 on the TRV (small arrow underneath numbers) and locked the valve (pulling the bottom part upwards). The outlet I've turned it completely off (clockwise) and then just slightly back on, less than a quarter of a turn. The reason I did this is because I get, for some reason, yet unknown to me) very strong hissing noise if I turn it higher than that.
3 down, 3 to go.
The one that is right next to the boiler now. As a reminder, nonthermostatic radiator valve installed on these ones.
TRVs are to control the temperature in each room, individually, thus saving you money. Basically they stop the flow to the radiator completely, once it hits a certain temperature. And the numbers on the dials should reflect on the room's desired temperature. But if they are installed the wrong way, like mine, waste of money and creates more hassle than to help you.
Moving on,
