BALANCING RADIATOR EXPERIMENT PART 1 looking into the ways of balancing rads and seeing if they work

excellent video - cannot wait for part.I think we are missing this basic, elementary knowledge on daily bases.

Hi Derek, i've just started watching your videos and think they're great. easy to follow and the way you explain things makes it sound simple so i hope you don't me posting a couple of questions which will hopefully help me better understand my home system. i have a pressurired system with ten rads, 6 upstairs and four downstairs. all have trv's on the feed and lockshield on the return with the exception of a towel rail that has lockshields on both sides. the pump is in the garage with the new tank and Logic Max Heat 18X boiler. I recently discovered that the trv's on 4 of the upstairs rads were installed on the return and i also noted that there wasn't a balancing valve on the HW coil return (which is shown in the boiler manual). I installed a balancing valve in the HW coil and swapped over the trv's and lockshields on the 4 rads yesterday, bled the system and all fired up lovely. i then checked with Grundfoss to ask which would be the best setting for my pump, they advised the proportional pressure setting, either 1 or 2. i tried this and thought all was ok until today when we ran out of hot water (the house is full of women) so i sprang into action on the HW only setting but after 30mins the water wasn't even lukewarm!! i can only think that the balancing valve "throttling effect" was sensed by the pump forcing it to slow down so much that it didn't heat the water so i changed the setting to constant pressure 1 and the water heated fine, and the heating which is on at the moment seems fine also. so my questions are..... could it have been the return temperature back to the boiler that stopped the HW only from heating the water or was it the pump sensing back pressure therefore slowing wverything down to nothing or, could it be something else??? All this started because i want to ensure my system is running as efficiently as it can so we're not throwing money down the drain, the bills are horrendous??? any help Derek would be greatly appreciated. Mick Kitcher-Chesterfield.

Great - especially like the way he looks into space when telling you something, as if he's thinking "am I right saying that?"

I bought one of those digital thermometer 10 years ago to Balance a system in a house that i bought couldn't get it to work. But recently i used it to set my automatic bypass valve and it worked a treat. I also check my system which i balanced it was give the correct delta T across rads and boiler i was surprised i balanced the whole system without anything. I guess u get years of experience to know how to balance a system

Did you open every rad fully at the end to then take the temperature or were all the other radiators currently off and just this one on?

Great video.

I have learnt so much...going to screwfix for a laser thermometer....

Hi Derek I watched a few of your videos yesterday and following your comments on one of the videos I also noticed that my valves are on the wrong side, ie the TRVs not on the flow side. Do you recommend that I get these changed. I would appreciate your considered opinion. Thank you Derick Oldfield

how do you balance rads with operntherm Inest) and moduating boiler?

Thomas Bradwell Thanks Derek

its very nice video thanks

I’ve seen some vids with interest….I’ve just added WC to my older Viessman 200 and it’s screwed up my UFH temp ….I’ve set curve to 2.2 now and rads get super hot but still very low UFH….any clues ?

I'm a little confused about the l/s closing down of the rads. Take an extreme example and we shut all l/s down to a 1/8 turn, surely the water going back to the boiler would be fairly quick and nearer the boiler set flow temperature than, say, all l/s open half way. Why not open fully all l/s and let the rads fill and convect heat out? What I'm trying to say is, is there a point when the l/s not being open enough is just as bad as the l/s being fully open?

Interesting video as having replaced all my rads in the past 12 months, I've been trying to learn how to correctly balance them. My question is, when did you turn the lockshield valve 'virtually off'? At 23:20 you fully opened it and then went to set the boiler to maximum output temp. But at 25:20 when you've found a deltaT of only 5degC across this rad, you said you'd virtually turned it off. Can you clarify this please?

At what flow temperature should you balance your radiators? Considering the laws of thermodynamics, the room temperature should affect your deltaT during the balancing process, which will be ever-varying during the process - the room is warming up. The radiator should reject more heat to the atmosphere in a colder room. So at the time, with an inlet (flow) temperature of 70oC, your rad exit (return) temperature might be 50oC in a colder room (deltaT 20), but 60oC in a warmer room (deltaT 10). The radiator efficiency would also affect this - an aluminium radiator with a much higher fin count should reject more heat and at a higher rate than a traditional iron rad. So using temperature to measure the flow characteristics of a radiator - to ascertain system hydraulic balance - is flawed. Thoughts? Also a thought on boiler flow and return temperatures - if your system can support a radiator deltaT of say 20oC, in that the flow rate ensures all radiators get sufficiently hot, your boiler return temperature will be indoubtedly lower. So at 70oC flow you may see 40oC (deltaT 30) - is it a case of the bigger the number (deltaT) the more efficient the boiler (better)?

very good just done 4 rads and trvs , some have locksheilds like kitchen as its too small for a trv, just need too flush 3 rads and add inhibitor so watching theses vids as there getting allot hotter sice ive flushed all the other rads , so i need to get my head around this even with the ones with no locksheilds

I have watched only half way through and I already like your video that explains not just how to trim the valves on each rad, but and some mathematics behind. As a not professional plumber I have another question now. What the theory behind about how boiler condensate regarding the Delta T? Probably I need more theory on how boiler works in mathematical way, not that it heats the water? Have you video about that?

Best videos on YouTube are from TomKat. What lowest temperature would you set for cylinder and boiler with radiators as an emitters? thanks

Wmmi cant find your pipe sizing video can you send me link of that video please

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