Moved in last week, can't get the place warm.

Tazium

Moved into a Gas heated two bed apartment last week. Heating has been on quite a lot given the weather. The rads get only barely warm while the water is hot enough to remove skin.

What I've done so far is check the lock stop valve on each rad, making sure it's open at least a half turn on each. This made no difference.

Each of the 5 rads have the Thermo valves, I've checked the pin moves up and down on each and opened the valve to the highest setting.

There are two bathrooms with heated towel rails, one is hot hot hot and other is meh, barely warm.

I've attached some pictures of the hotpress, there are a number of valves there and the pressure pump too, any suggestions on which one to start with?

hufpc8w3adnk65

Tazium wrote: »

Moved into a Gas heated two bed apartment last week. Heating has been on quite a lot given the weather. The rads get only barely warm while the water is hot enough to remove skin.

What I've done so far is check the lock stop valve on each rad, making sure it's open at least a half turn on each. This made no difference.

Each of the 5 rads have the Thermo valves, I've checked the pin moves up and down on each and opened the valve to the highest setting.

There are two bathrooms with heated towel rails, one is hot hot hot and other is meh, barely warm.

I've attached some pictures of the hotpress, there are a number of valves there and the pressure pump too, any suggestions on which one to start with?

Have you bled the rads?

hufpc8w3adnk65

Tazium wrote: »

Moved into a Gas heated two bed apartment last week. Heating has been on quite a lot given the weather. The rads get only barely warm while the water is hot enough to remove skin.

What I've done so far is check the lock stop valve on each rad, making sure it's open at least a half turn on each. This made no difference.

Each of the 5 rads have the Thermo valves, I've checked the pin moves up and down on each and opened the valve to the highest setting.

There are two bathrooms with heated towel rails, one is hot hot hot and other is meh, barely warm.

I've attached some pictures of the hotpress, there are a number of valves there and the pressure pump too, any suggestions on which one to start with?

Have you bled the rads?

beazee

Start with bleeding the rads?

Tazium

Should have mentioned that's been done too. Thanks for the suggestions, only one rad had any air and I let it go until the water was running for a few seconds.

sullzz

Tazium wrote: »

Should have mentioned that's been done too. Thanks for the suggestions, only one rad had any air and I let it go until the water was running for a few seconds.

Is there a thermostat on a wall somewhere , mabey in the hall or livingroom or bedroom , check its turned up

Tazium

The termostat is up max. Had an electrician in today for other stuff and mentioned to him. The gas boiler was set to 55 degrees, his advice was to turn it up to 80 degrees. Did that and there is a positive improvement in the rads so hopefully that's all that was needed. What do ye think?

hfallada

Have you checked the pressure of the system. Most boilers so the pressure. When the pressure dropped in our system the house was freezing. Also check the gas is fully on where it comes in at the house in the white box

Pete67

It sounds like a circulation problem, and given you have scalding hot water in the taps, it is most likely that the balancing valve for the hot water cylinder is open too much. It should be open only about 1/2 turn. It's not visible in your pics but it should be near the bottom of the cylinder on the return from the coil. Close it fully and then open it 1/2 to 3/4 of a turn.

Also you should not need to have the boiler set at 80C to get heat into the house. The radiators should be quite hot to the touch with the boiler set to 55 to 60C.

Don't top up the pressure any more. The system pressure looks very high already from your second picture - 3.3 bar is very close to lifting the safety valve. However this should not stop the radiators from heating effectively. You should drop the pressure to 1.5 bar approx by opening a radiator vent and collecting the water until the pressure drops to 1.5 bar on the gauge. If there is a second pressure guage on the boiler check that they are approximately in agreement.

Then make sure the fill valve is closed and disconnect the filling loop until you need to top up again. Keep an eye on the pressure gauge for a week or two until you get a feel for how often the pressure needs to be topped up. It should only need to be done once every couple of months. If it needs to be topped up more frequently then you have a leak somewhere which needs to be sorted out.

Best of luck!

Tazium

Thanks Pete67, think I'm more worried now. Both the boiler and the pressure are in approximate agreement now at 2.7 bar. I've turned down the boiler temp to 70 just now so the pressure should also reduce further. There's no valve at the bottom of the tank, just the ones pictured. There is a radiator style valve to the left of the gauge in the second pic, it's open and the one under the gauge is also open is it maybe this one that should be closed a little?

It's the first time since moving in that the house is warm, I don't want to break anything though.

Pete67

Fully close the radiator style valve beside the pressure gauge, it's only for filling the heating system and occasional topping up to replace water lost over time through tiny leaks.

On the left hand side of the hot water cylinder is a motorised valve, looks like a Myson one, it's the white box with the neon light to show when it's open. Is there another pipe directly under this one, perhaps with a red handwhweel valve? If so, that's the balancing valve.

The orange box close to it is probably the cylinder thermostat - does it have a dial with temperature scale on it? Turn it down to 60degC so that the valve will close when the water gets hot, and avoid risk of scalding from the hot taps.

Can you post another picture with a close up of the cylinder area near the orange and white boxes and also the area below this?

Tazium

Thanks again,

I've attached more pics, and taking your info I've reduced the termo at the tank and followed along the lower pipe to find the control valve which actually ends up over the tank if I've got the right one.

Thanks again for the helpful posts. I'll owe you some in turn.

Tazium

I closed that white valve to the left of the pressure gauge, but on checking again now the pressure had increased to almost 4 bar, opening that valve reduced it immediately to 2.7. Not sure what's going on there.

Pete67

OK, given that you seem to have an unvented cylinder, and the difficulties in troubleshooting based on pictures, I'm going to recommend that you get a professional in to have a look. If you are seeing pressures near 4 bar in either the heating system or the unvented cylinder then something is definitely not right.