Closing off all radiators and turning on the gas heating. Will my house explode?

JackieChang

I want to turn the gas heating on for an hour every morning to get some hot water for the day.

However I don't need heat from the radiators. Just enough to warm up a bit of water in the water tank.

To save money, I was thinking of shutting off the radiators.

First of all, will the house explode?

Secondly, will this damage the heating system at all?

10-10-20

Hi, this is a loaded question.The answer is that you should be able to do this but it all depends on how the house is piped.

Do you have a valve in the hot-press or near the boiler to control the flow at all? I'm presuming not that you know of? It might help if you took photos of the hot-press and/or the boiler piping to show us.

micks_address

this sounds like the way our house was - we had one set of pipes that heated the radiators and hot water. When we got the boiler changed they added a second run of piples to the hotpress from the boiler so we could run the boiler to heat the water independently. Shutting off radiators shouldnt make your house explode.. you may end up having to bleed air out of the system.. unless you have some sort of other setup..

10-10-20

At worst you'll trigger an over-pressure event on the heating circuit and the boiler might vent-off. That's what should happen.

CreadanLady

It shouldn't of course, but having said that we all know the shall we say variable standard of plumbing installations we have in ireland. Take a look at the WTF plumbing thread. You're house could equally well explode with all radiators and valves open. That is what we are dealing with in cute hurr short cut ireland.

JackieChang

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120777391#Comment_120777391

Here is a photo of the hotpress (first two pics). I can see one valve. And then photos of the boiler. I don't see anything to control the flow in the boiler.

Also the photos look like they're turned on their side for me. If it's the same for you that's some boards bug, I didn't rotate them.

10-10-20

I think what you have there @JackieChang is a very rudimentary heating system and the question of whether the cylinder was plumbed in to allow the rads be isolated or not can only be answered by a plumber on site. I'd be looking to have one come over and quote for a controls upgrade (cylinder and boilder appear to be new and fine) as well as to check out that mystical t-joint at the upper feed to the cylinder - I can't work out whether it's a direct copper-pipe to copper-pipe solder joint or a t-piece in disguise... and there's something about the bend at the lower coil too which looks off to me.

I hope this helps, but for the sake of your pocket and overall comfort I do think that an upgrade would be highly beneficial.

cute geoge

I have a similar water cylinder to the pic above but oil fired boiler .I am thinking of just disconecting a wire in the circulating pump to stop the rads from heating as valves stuck in some rads

My cylinder should overlow anyway into expansion tank at the very worst .

Is oil at 90 cent considered cheaper to heat water then night rate electric immersion at 15 cent /unit is my next question