Advice on newbuild radiator sound

Kildare787

Hi everyone,

We recently moved into a new build home and have Faral Alliance radiators. Please see link https://www.rvr.ie/collections/diecast-aluminium-radiators/products/alliance-diecast-aluminium-radiator

These are lower temperature and more environmentally friendly (we are told). We have an air to water heat system in our home.

We would like to know if it is normal for these type of radiators to make a noise when they are heating up. We can hear what sounds like a constant flow of air (or a 'whishing' sound) when some are heating up. Some of them also make a high pitched whistling sound when heating up.

It's hard to sleep in the room when you can hear these sounds. Can anyone advise if this is normal or how we can reduce/stop the sounds. The radiators were installed about 18 months ago. We moved in to the new home 6 months ago.

(Note when the noises are happening we can twist the cap on the valve at the bottom of the rad off and the sound stops immediately as the radiator cannot then continue to heat up. We just do this when we go to bed. We just think it's strange that new rads would make noises like this.

Thanks
Paul

jenneyk19

noises

https://www.designerradiatorsdirect.co.uk/blog/why-is-my-radiator-making-noise/

Wearb

I think your problems are from 2 caused.
1 Radiators expanding on their hangers. This is often a ticking noise when the radiator heats up or cools down. See if there are small plastic clips on the hangers between the radiator and hanger.

2 Thermostatic radiator valves (trv). These can constrict the flow through your radiator and make whistling noises. Next time it happens turn the PRV fully up and leave it there for a few hours to see if that helps.

Are you loosing any system pressure?

Get installer back to sort it. You shouldn't have so much noise in a new system.

How is your house zoned?
What BER?

Kildare787

Wearb wrote: »

I think your problems are from 2 caused.
1 Radiators expanding on their hangers. This is often a ticking noise when the radiator heats up or cools down. See if there are small plastic clips on the hangers between the radiator and hanger.

2 Thermostatic radiator valves (trv). These can constrict the flow through your radiator and make whistling noises. Next time it happens turn the PRV fully up and leave it there for a few hours to see if that helps.

Are you loosing any system pressure?

Get installer back to sort it. You shouldn't have so much noise in a new system.

How is your house zoned?
What BER?

Hi thanks for the reply. Pressure seems fine. Stays constant from what I can see.

They have the thermostat valve on the bottom (I think) see photos attached. We had better valves on them but they were messing with system which was getting an error code. This happened to a lot of of the new houses in here. So the company replaced them with basic caps and the error code went away. The sounds we hear now were the exact same with the old valves so I know it's not the small caps you see in the photo.


It's an A3 rated new build. We can twist the cap when the noise is happening and it shuts off the rad and the noise. That's what we have been doing when we are going to bed.

There is no ticking. It's definitely sounds like air in a constant 'shhhhhhhh' sound when they are on. Two or the small ones in the bathrooms also whistle when on, high pitched.

So you're saying to try just keep it open completely? If we twist the caps all the way they just fall off. So are you saying to just twist them (loosen) as far as we can and leave them be?

Wearb

Yes. Take off the cap off a noisey rad to see if that fixes it. Then you will have found the cause.
Btw. I thought having the caps on closed them?

How is the house zoned?

Wearb

Wearb wrote: »

Yes. Take off the cap off a noisey rad to see if that fixes it. Then you will have found the cause.
Btw. I thought having the caps on closed them?

How is the house zoned?

I just zoomed in. I thought you were talking about what's called decorators caps. Those look a little different and seem to work like a lock shield.

Maybe someone else can confirm.

Kildare787

Wearb wrote: »

Yes. Take off the cap off a noisey rad to see if that fixes it. Then you will have found the cause.
Btw. I thought having the caps on closed them?

How is the house zoned?

Ye the cap on it closes it if you turn it clockwise. I'll try just leave it completely open and see what happens.

We have two Zones. Bottom floor is 1 and is underfloor heating. Top floor is the rads and zone two. Is that what you mean?

Kildare787

Wearb wrote: »

I just zoomed in. I thought you were talking about what's called decorators caps. Those look a little different and seem to work like a lock shield.

Maybe someone else can confirm.

Yes it think it is. We had a more complicated one on them all that had numbers 1 to 6. But they were causing a fault in the system, same with our neighbors. So the company took them out and just put these on. Essentially the cap just shuts it on or off. We just leave it 3 quartwrs the way open. Maybe I'll just leave them fully open for now or off and see what happens.

Wearb

Yes leave them fully open. In an A3 house you shouldn't need them anyway. If rads are properly sized, each room in the zone should heat up evenly. Let the thermostats control the zones.

Have you checked the rads for air?
Make sure you know how to top up the system before doing this as bleeding the rads will lower the pressure. It's not likely that they need to be done anyway, but if not purged properly from installation there could be some.

On a new house, I would not do too much on this as its still the responsibility of the builder and you dont want to be giving them an excuse to say that it was ok before you interfered with it.

So for now just leave the caps off or fully open and let the zone stat control it.

corkgsxr

Looks like myson petite valves with no thermostatic heads on them

I fit them valves alot

John.G

All TRVs used to have these manual shut off heads supplied , they just press on the actuating pin and push it in when you close the valve,
to check if you have a problem with the TRVs (noise) open the TRV fully and shut the lockshield valve on the other side, then start cracking it open very slowly to see if you can get the noise again, if not, then a TRV problem, if noisy then possibly pump running with excessive head pressure. If no noise using lockshield, check that the TRVs are bi directional and where they are fitted, a lot of installers are of the view that even if bi directional and mounted vertically on the return that they can still be noisy. I have all mine mounted horizontally on the return (for better room temperature sensing), this also means that the flow is from under the valve seat, I have never had a problem with (8) them even if I increase the pump head to its max of 6M