Looking at getting new central heating in our house, along with the boiler we will need to replace the old radiators.

One of the things we are toying with is aluminium radiators, obviously these are significantly more expensive than steel but do the benefits outweigh the additional cost?

Can they be mixed with traditional steel rads or do we need to replace them all?

Thanks
Rusty

Aluminium rad’s will heat up quicker as the material is a much faster conductor of heat than Steel.

I wouldn’t mix Steel and Aluminium as the Galvanic potential between the two materials will cause them to corrode internally and leak much quicker.

cost against steel seems to vary depending on shape for some reason e.g.
traditional shape, long and low steel is cheaper
but thin and tall aluminium is cheaper
we’ve mainly got tall ones which give you a lot more wall space and made them at least comparable with the mix of sized we had.

with and inhibitor you can run aluminium and steel together.
mine are all aluminium bar one small towel rad but for the moment they’re run from a rather old cast iron boiler, flushed my filter a few weeks back after a year and no sign of any problems at all.

aluminium-house-radiators-are-they-worth-it

HTH

Cheers for the link Keith, will have a read of that at lunch.

The tall ones appeal for the additional wall space we will gain especially in the downstairs rooms, however having tall ones in the bedrooms etc may not be so worth while.

Are there any manufacturers in particular to go for or avoid?

Can any one recommend places to buy from?

yeah we’ve got a mix of uprights and a few traditional shapes ones in bedrooms too.

I can recommend the company I used and their rad’s (we had a few from each range to get the exact sizes we needed), no experience of any others though

Any further recommendations for websites for aluminium radiators?

see my posts in the thread keith linked to.

I got mine through The Radiator Company.
http://www.theradiatorcompany.co.uk/

BTW – had the Al rads now for coming up to their third winter and Ive been very happy with them. Much higher BTU for their size than steel. Take up very little space on the wall, but throw out plenty of heat. Nice clean look and the tall towel rail/radiator hybrid in the bathroom works brilliantly.

Hi Stoner,

Cheers for the link, I used that site last night to calculate the BTU values for the rooms but it was a little awkward to go through each room to figure out what rads they could offer. will try again at lunch and see what price they come to.

Last nights initial quote on another site was £2500 for the whole house.

that includes the boiler right ?

Nope nope that is just the rads 🙁 looking to get 9 in total and I still need to price valves. The copper pipe and boiler are being supplied by the fitter.

I know I could get a very nice bike for that but whisper it quietly I think I am ok on that front for now.

BEND OVER

how you gonna fit tall and narrow under your windows 😀

Side ways???? 😉

Need tall ones in 3 rooms, the rest will be regular shaped. I am hoping to find them for a better price than that, that was just the first site I found.

Ok so trade radiators has me down to £1400 for 8 of the 9 radiators however I cannot find a small aluminium towel radiator for the bathroom.

I could keep what is there but does anyone know if aluminium towel radiators exist for relatively small BTU output (1500 BTU).

I was going to say it would not matter in theory because as long as the water temp is low enough when it returns to the boiler then all the heat has been extracted by the rads into the rooms.

But as pointed out, alu rads would be smaller to extract the same heat.

Let me know where you end up going, I could do with one really powerful rad in the downstairs of our house. I don’t think mixing would cause corrosion would it? The rads aren’t touching each other?

Mol for mixing aluminum and steel rads a different inhibitor is recommended, see thread linked to in post 3 by Keith.

Have you considered carbon fiber or titanium? Steel and aluminum are so mainstream! 😆 And a Ti one is a radiator for life. 😉

utter waste of money. you ll never save enough to justify the additional expense spend money eliminating draughts and then insulate..

Ally is fine a lot of boilers have them for heat exchangers, but make sure you use either Sentinel or Fernox.

most expensive rads we used were some Hudevad which were around 15K for about 20 rads! They were steel though and bloody heavy, all concealed tappings so you couldn’t see the pipe enter them. Very difficult to fit too.