Upstairs radiators not heating properly

Redpunto

Hiya, live in fairly new house, about 4 years old, first tenants, radiators are heated by gas. The ones downstairs are fine and hot but the ones upstairs are only heating about halfway up and therefore the rooms get freezing. Ive tried bleeding them but nothings seems to happen, as in no air comes out and no water comes out and it doesnt make the slightest difference to the radiator heating up. Could it be a water pressure problem? That we dont have enough pressure? How would we go about fixing it?
Thanks

LookBehindYou

Air needs to be bled more. Check there is water coming in to the system, from a small tank in the attic.

Kashkai

Could be one of the following:

Your pump is faulty and cannot pump the water upstairs to the rads, or the pump speed is too low. Try increasing the speed of the pump.

You have insufficient water in the system. Check the pressure guage which is usually in the hotpress. It should be 1.0 bar when cold and 1.5 bar when the heating is running. If the pressure is low, add some water via the filling loop and monitor the pressure to see if it drops again. If so, you have a leak somewhere.

See if the valve is sufficiently open to allow the hot water to get into the rad. My mother was saying one of her rads wasn't working when in fact, it had been turned off.

The system might need to be balanced, i.e. restrict the flow of hot water to the downstairs rads by turning the lockshield valve (the one you don't normally touch when turning a rad on or off) to allow sufficient hot water to reach upstairs.

The gas boiler might need its thermostat turned up to heat the water sufficiently.

Try these before you go to the expense of calling in a plumber.

leakman

Generally if the pump goes you will have a problem heating the downstairs rads. If you are not getting water or air out of the rads, there is insufficient pressure in the system and it will need to be topped up. This i suspect is why you have a problem with heat upstairs

Kashkai

leakman wrote: »

Generally if the pump goes you will have a problem heating the downstairs rads. If you are not getting water or air out of the rads, there is insufficient pressure in the system and it will need to be topped up. This i suspect is why you have a problem with heat upstairs

Not necessarily. The rads downstairs can still be heated by way of convected heat from the boiler which will heat up the rads nearest to the boiler while leaving those further away, in the OP's case, upstairs cold. When my pump went, a few of the rads nearest the boiler got warm while the rest stayed cold.

leakman

I understand that, but the combination of poor heat upstairs and no air or water coming out of the upstairs rads surely points to a lack of water/pressure, and not a problem with the pump?

Kashkai

I'm not disagreeing with you and its one of the possible problems that I suggested to him. When he bleeds the rads and nothing comes out, it is a sign of low pressure alright but he can do a number of checks to narrow down the problem. Low pressure usually means a leak which is the worst case scenario as I know too well

leakman

Water has obviously escaped from the system if there is low pressure, however, if there is still heat in the downstairs rads and some heat in the upstairs rads, its quite minor. Top the system up, problem solved.

Jediknight

Prosperous Dave wrote: »

Not necessarily. The rads downstairs can still be heated by way of convected heat from the boiler which will heat up the rads nearest to the boiler while leaving those further away, in the OP's case, upstairs cold. When my pump went, a few of the rads nearest the boiler got warm while the rest stayed cold.

No they won't, they will only succsessful circulate if they are approx 0.5m above the level of the boiler for the return to cool back to the boiler on gravity !

I'd say nothing wrong with the pump, it must be a sealed - pressurised system and the pressure is down, top up pressure to 1bar and try to bleed radiators upstairs, if you still get no air at them, then your upstairs bleeders are blocked with dirt ! ! with both rad valves in "off" position, remove bled screw and insert a small pin through bled screw opening to clear blockage ! then revert to earlier instructions ...

Ydissac

Tried bleeding my radiators upstairs and initially got the hissing sound but the radiators did not fill with water. So on looking up to see what was wrong it was mentioned that I should find the water fill valve which should most likely be in the hot press and turn it on slowly and then try bleeding the radiators again and so on.... anyway no such luck couldn't find it anywhere. Meanwhile I had accidentally left one of the valves on one of the radiators open, and later on that day I turned on the heating, to discover that after a while water started coming down through the light fitting in the ceiling of the dining room. Found the problem - the water was flowing from the radiator where I had left the valve open, so I closed it and then went on to bleed all the radiators up-stairs while the heating was on, it worked like a dream and all the rads are now in full working order. I have no idea why this worked, only that bleeding the heaters while the heating was turned on seemed to work.

passecompose

To bring up an old thread. Having a similar problem.. All radiators upstairs are cold except one. Every radiator was bled and water comes out. The pressure shows 1.5 bar which should be good. Tried turning them all off upstairs and back on one by one. Only the same one upstairs starts to get warm again. Anything that I'm missing?