Moving radiator

geotrig

I have an internal wall with the a radiator on it either side Piping comes out threw walls to rads it's ground floor and atimber framed housebuilt mid 2000's

I'm thinking I want to move both to other walls ,90degress from here but ( not same wall) and trying to gauge what type of job it is since and where the current piping would be running from I.e. up through ground or from ceiling down. I'm thinking it might be ceiling down but not certain.

BDI

Ceiling down unless plumber was a madman and ran pipes floor up into wall and then back out.

But I’d guess ceiling down

Sleeper12

BDI wrote:

Ceiling down unless plumber was a madman and ran pipes floor up into wall and then back out.

Maybe I'm not understanding correctly but why would heating pipes come down from the ceiling? It's been decades since I did heating systems but standard practice then was in the floor and up to the wall to the rad.

Maybe think has changed but you really don't want lots of water pipes running f ceiling to floor inside the wall. The more pipes in the wall there more chance someone will put a screw through a pipe. It would also be a longer run using mo pipe and having to heat more water before it hits the rads

geotrig

Sleeper12 wrote: »

Maybe I'm not understanding correctly but why would heating pipes come down from the ceiling? It's been decades since I did heating systems but standard practice then was in the floor and up to the wall to the rad.

Maybe think has changed but you really don't want lots of water pipes running f ceiling to floor inside the wall. The more pipes in the wall there more chance someone will put a screw through a pipe. It would also be a longer run using mo pipe and having to heat more water before it hits the rads

I would have thought the same on older houses these, these I'm not sure. There is a mixture it seems of copper and plastic I'm not sure if on same system to be fair. I would have preferred if there were in the ground as I have opportunity at the moment to run pipes but would be pointless if coming from ceiling.

Sleeper12

geotrig wrote:

I would have thought the same on older houses these, these I'm not sure. There is a mixture it seems of copper and plastic I'm not sure if on same system to be fair. I would have preferred if there were in the ground as I have opportunity at the moment to run pipes but would be pointless if coming from ceiling.

As I said I haven't done this type of work in decades. Maybe best practice has changed.

BDI

Standard set up would be boiler to ceiling between two floors. Then straight up to upper floor rads entering rad valve vertically. Then down to lower floor rads in the wall and entering rads either from wall out horizontally or down into floor and bent twice and back up to rad vertically.

Of course the pipes have to go to an area with control valves, even more so these days but back in the old days the cylinder came off the heating pipes just like a rad,

It could be possible the pipes ran down to ground level once then along the floor to each rad which wouldn’t be too uncommon especially when rads were added later to a system but then why go in the wall and have a horizontal rad valve and an extra elbow and wall to patch up when you can just go straight up from floor?

The only reason I can think would be if the rads were back to back but the t could be in the floor for this and still get vertical rad valves.

Sleeper12

BDI wrote:

Standard set up would be boiler to ceiling between two floors. Then straight up to upper floor rads entering rad valve vertically. Then down to lower floor rads in the wall and entering rads either from wall out horizontally or down into floor and bent twice and back up to rad vertically.

You'd have to drain each rad downstairs individually with this setup wouldn't you? Nowhere to install a single drain off?

BDI

Sleeper12 wrote: »

You'd have to drain each rad downstairs individually with this setup wouldn't you? Nowhere to install a single drain off?

Yeah, or just crack the nut and drain it into a bowl or plastic bag which isn’t fun but that’s common.
Your way is better but your way won’t have rad pipes in walls it will have pipes from the floor up.

Sleeper12

BDI wrote:

Yeah, or just crack the nut and drain it into a bowl or plastic bag which isn’t fun but that’s common. Your way is better but your way won’t have rad pipes in walls it will have pipes from the floor up.

Ah look I'm old fashioned but I see disadvantages with the set up you discribe but no advantages. Seems like a major step backwards IMO.

All of my pipes are in the floor. In some rooms they come straight up into the rad. Some rooms like the bathroom where the rad is facing the door I brought the pipes from floor into the wall and straight out into the rad. Other rooms floor into wall & out in the centre of the bottom of the rad, then pipe hidden under rad and into valves. I just can't see a single good reason to bring pipes down inside the wall.

BDI

Sleeper12 wrote: »

Ah look I'm old fashioned but I see disadvantages with the set up you discribe but no advantages. Seems like a major step backwards IMO.

All of my pipes are in the floor. In some rooms they come straight up into the rad. Some rooms like the bathroom where the rad is facing the door I brought the pipes from floor into the wall and straight out into the rad. Other rooms floor into wall & out in the centre of the bottom of the rad, then pipe hidden under rad and into valves. I just can't see a single good reason to bring pipes down inside the wall.

Again I’m not here to argue the merits of it. It’ll be the way it’s done.

Sleeper12

BDI wrote:

Again I’m not here to argue the merits of it. It’ll be the way it’s done.

Oh I'm not arguing with you. Sorry if I gave that impression I haven't done heating in a long time. I have no idea how OPs rads are pipped & it would be pointless us arguing about it.

I'm thinking out loud more than anything

BDI

Sleeper12 wrote: »

Ah look I'm old fashioned but I see disadvantages with the set up you discribe but no advantages. Seems like a major step backwards IMO.

All of my pipes are in the floor. In some rooms they come straight up into the rad. Some rooms like the bathroom where the rad is facing the door I brought the pipes from floor into the wall and straight out into the rad. Other rooms floor into wall & out in the centre of the bottom of the rad, then pipe hidden under rad and into valves. I just can't see a single good reason to bring pipes down inside the wall.

Sorry I was busy earlier, I think this method may have started here when plumbers were dealing with poured concrete floors or (which happened around the birth of gas and central heating in Ireland) they were fitting systems in houses that were already tiled or had wooden floor in the kitchen. Upstairs bathroom would have been Lino and bedrooms carpet or even floorboard. It was easy to go from the boiler to the bedroom floor to the hot press and across the house in the upstairs floor, notching the joists and lifting the floorboards under the carpet.
The pipes then came down the walls surface and were boxed in.
When the systems began to go into new builds they realized they didn’t have to box the pipes if they went in the stud walls and they didn’t have to have pipes and fitting buried in concrete and don’t have the pressure of getting the pipes in before the pour.

I could be miles off but that’s the way I see it. Sometimes I’ve worked in houses with joist floors and pipes running under them but they would have the pipes coming straight from the floor up.

The reason for this is that there is no reason to go in the wall and back out apart from maybe being able to mop under the rad. If you factor in taking skirting board off, chasing the wall and then repairing it in a retro fit I’d say the boss might issue a p45 if he was wondering what you were at all day and you told him you like pipes in walls.

You could still have a drain off valve on each pipe but sometime around the start of the last boom I noticed that they stopped using them to save on cost in new builds.

It is possible the op has pipes in his downstairs floor but I’m betting against it.