You may have found on your heating system that when you have the hot water switched on and the heating off, some or all of the radiators still get warm. It seems really wrong and you might suspect a leaking 3-port valve or similar but usually the problem is much more mundane.
It is caused by hot water in the return pipe from cycinder to boiler convecting up into radiators naturally. The radiators will heat up only slowly and once the water cylinder is hot, the boiler will switch off but it is still a bit of a waste.
What can you do? You can fit check valves to the return pipes on the radiators or ideally fit less of them right next to the main return pipe rather than one per rad which might be excessive. Make sure you point them the correct way (towards the return pipe) and I would avoid double-check valves since the single check ones require enough pressure to open that I wouldn't want to overload the pump.
I did it the other day on a 22mm pipe which was the return for 3 radiators and now they don't get hot unless the heating is on.
Energytastic!
No comments:
Post a Comment