How to Balance Your Radiators | Save Money and Increase Heat

so do you want to make your heating system more efficient this winter I think we all know the answer to that question I'll be teaching you how to balance your radiators which will increase your heating system's efficiency and therefore save you money this winter or maybe you've got a cold radiator and you want to learn how to fix it and the best bit is any of you watching this video will be able to do the job by the time the video is finished because there's nothing difficult about the job at all think of us free Heat [Music] thank you so you're probably wondering how's this guy going to save me money or if I've got a cold radiator how's he going to teach me how to fix that on a whiteboard well first of all what I'll do is run through how your heating system works then we'll go around the house together and we'll take a look at how to adjust the lock Shield valves on the radiators and how to get the most from your heating system so let's take a look on the Whiteboard here first of all please don't judge my drawing because I'm not the best at drawing so what you'll typically have in your home is a boiler let's say that that's downstairs and it's a Combi boiler for argument's sake we have the ground floor here with two radiators in it it doesn't really matter how many radiators you have this is just to explain to you how it works but you might have four downstairs in this case we have two upstairs we have three so we'll call that floor one and we'll call that ground floor obviously if you live in a single story building it'll just be all on one level what you'll have inside the boiler is a pump and that will pump hot water around your heating system the hot water will travel from the boiler through a flow pipe and you can see that by that red line just there if you have it upstairs it will also tee off and come into the floor upstairs and it will feed those radiators upstairs as well if we now take a look at how the radiators are fed we'll bring the flow pipe up into the bottom of the radiator you can see that there and that goes into the bottom of a thermostatic radiator valve so you can see there each radiator now has flow coming in so now each of our radiators have hot water going to them but the ball is going to want its hot water back and this is a circuit so now we need to add some return pipes so let's run a return just next to our hot water pipe there and each radiator will have a return back to that pipe so now the water is able to get back to the boiler via something called a lock Shield valve on the radiator and then back into the return pipe and back to the boiler now this is where the lock Shield valve comes in and that lock Shield valve might be the reason your radiators are either not getting to the temperature that you require or they might not be getting hot at all so why would you want to balance your heating system and how will that help you to save money well hot water will naturally travel upwards especially if you've got radiators upstairs and downstairs you might find that your downstairs radiators don't get as hot as the upstairs once and that will typically be caused by bad balancing of the heating system so the hot water will stay upstairs and it will find the easiest route back to the boiler Because unless there's a restriction in place the hot water won't want to travel a longer distance than it has to you'll find the easiest way way back to the boiler and that is where the lock Shield valve on each radiator comes in because that way we can actually increase the flow or decrease the flow for each of these radiators and we can then encourage that hot water to find its way to the further radiators so let's go and take a look at the first radiator and I'll show you how we adjust the lock Shield valve so here we are at the first Radiator in the system now I know what you're thinking how do I know which radiator is being fed with the hot water first now the easiest and simplest way to find that out is to turn the heating system on and to see which one gets warm first second third so on and so forth so on the return I mentioned you have something called a lock Shield valve so the lock Shield valve is this one here so all we need to do is pop the little cap off you'll have a little cap on there and you can see here that the lock Shield valve can be adjusted on this little pin here and you can use an adjustable spanner or a pair of grips to adjust that lock Shield valve by turning and it clockwise or anti-clockwise so we've looked at the Lock Shield valve you're now familiar with what that is so how do we know how much to adjust each lock Shield valve well there's a couple of ways you can do this if you've got no temperature reading equipment then there is a way to do it and I'll show you that in a moment but first of all I'll show you how to do it with a thermal imaging camera or this can also be done with a digital thermometer so the first way to balance each radiator is to use a thermal imaging camera such as this top Don TC View and that plugs into the phone I'll put a little Link in the description if you want to go check one of these out I understand a lot of you don't have that equipment and I will be showing you the old school way of doing this if you don't have one of these I'll show you this first because it is quite cool to watch even if you don't have one so I've plugged the TC view into the phone and that will then turn the phone into a thermal imaging camera so let's take a look at the flow and return for the radiator now the valves don't necessarily represent the flow and return on Modern valve so the flow in this case is coming through the lock Shield valve and it's returning via the TRV that can vary on Modern valves so don't get too hung up on that so what we tend to look for is a 12 degree drop across the radiator so for example if the water comes into the radiator at 65 degrees we want it to exit at 53 degrees or around that it could be a little more it could be a little less but that's what we're aiming for across each Radiator in our home so if we take a look at this radiator here you can see what we've got we can see that the water coming in is 72 degrees at the moment now if we come across the radiator and look at it going oh we want to be looking for around 60. so we've got 66 there so we need to slow that down so that we get around 60. so what we'd now do is grab an adjustable spanner and just close that valve off a quarter of a turn to close the lock Shield valve you will turn the pin clockwise to open it more you would turn it anti-clockwise leave the system for five minutes and then come back and take another reading and we'll see what temperature we then have so let's give this another check 77 [Music] and we've got around 67 there so I'm pretty happy with that now I can now move on to radiator 2 and then radiator three and so on and so forth until I've balanced the heating system but I hear what you're thinking you probably don't have Precision temperature reading equipment like that and if you don't let's do this the old school way so before I show you how to do this if you don't have a digital thermometer please make sure that if you're liking the video so far that you hit the like button for me because that really helps the video to reach and help more people like you on YouTube and if you like DIY videos then make sure you hit subscribe because you don't want to miss out on all the great stuff that I've got to come so let me show you how to do this without a digital thermometer the first step in the process is much the same as before turn the heating on and make note of which order each radiator heats up then come to the first Radiator in the system in this case it's this one here turn the lock Shield valve all the way closed and then open the lock Shield valve a quarter of a turn now come across to the last Radiator on the system this is the last Radiator on the system what you now need to do is open the lock shield on the last Radiator in the system fully until it stops second Radiator on your heating system and open it up a tiny bit more than you did the first radiator each radiator between the first radiator and the last radiator should be opened a tiny bit more than the previous radiator so if you've been the first one a quarter of a turn the second one should be a little bit more than a quarter of a turn and the third one should be and the third one should be a little bit more than the second one and so on until we get to the last radiator which of course we've already opened all the way up once you've adjusted the lock Shield valve on all of the radiators the heating system will be balanced so that's how you maximize the efficiency of your heating system fix any cold radiators and save money if the videos helped you out don't forget to like And subscribe and visit us over on the patreon where we have a Discord group and we all help each other out you just drop the text on there someone will come back to you with anything that you need help on around the house I hope you've enjoyed the video as much as I've enjoyed making it for you give it a thumbs up if you have and I'll see you guys in the next one

Channel: The DIY Guy

Views: 1,242,735

Keywords: diy, heating, plumbing, heating hacks for home, heating tips, diy plumbing, diy heating, diy guy, radiator balancing, radiator balancing guide, radiator balencing, how to balance a radiator, how to balance a heating system, balance your radiators, balance radiators, how to fix cold radiator, fix cold radiators, cold radiator, how to balence a heating system, how to adjust a radiator valve, how to adjust a lockshield valve, how to make your radiators more efficient

Id: 7NsZ2d2Oups

Length: 9min 33sec (573 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 15 2022