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  • House plumbing – updating my radiators
  • steve-g
    Free Member

    My house has central heating from when central heating was first invented with a back boiler and old single radiators, and while in the fullness of time I intend to get the whole thing drastically upgraded I stumbled across second hand double convector radiators for peanuts on ebay.

    My question, if I take my measurements on the ones we have now, then wait for convector or double convector radiators that match those sizes to come up on ebay, is it as simple as isolating the old ones, and swapping them out for these “new” ones? Even if it is I will likely pay someone to do it to avoid the inevitable unforeseen problems, but in theory is it really that simple or am I missing something?

    jimdubleyou
    Full Member

    From a purely anecdotal viewpoint, I’d be wary of adding anything to an old back-boiler that hasn’t been serviced recently.

    Ours ended up nearly burning the house down when flames started spurting out the side of it…

    ffej
    Free Member

    Steve

    Rads really aren’t that expensive.. with a second hand one, unless you know it hasn’t been used for long and has had an inhibitor used in the system you’d never be sure on the internal corrosion level.

    You’d also be limited by the power output of your boiler. You can only get heat out that you put in to the system.

    If you have valves that will hold to each side of the rad however then it’s a pretty simple swap – assuming you get exactly the right size.

    Jeff

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    newrobdob
    Free Member

    It can be quite simple to swap radiators, it could be a nightmare.

    With a double radiator the valves site further out from the wall. You might be able to reconnect them to the existing tails but it’s likely some fettling will be required.

    The biggest issue will be that the new double radiators, if they are the same width and height will produce much more heat than your current ones. So you might be fitting a huge radiator when you don’t need to.

    Radiators aren’t that expensive new so personally I would get the correct size of rad for the room calculated and have it fitted properly with a new quality TRV. If you’re paying a plumber he will be happier fitting new components and it’ll look better too.

    globalti
    Free Member

    If only life was as simple as a like-for-like swop. You will find that things are worn out, rusted, too short, too long, in the wrong place and clogged with muck. It will turn into a nightmare of bodging.

    Simple example: the inlet and outlet for a double rad will be further away from the wall than for a single rad, thanks to the greater thickness.

    Get a plumber in to assess the whole system then go out and ride your bike.

    ffej
    Free Member

    As an update.. also if you go with deeper rads (ie doubles rather than singles) then the pipe position will move outward from the wall. There may not be wiggle room on your pipes to cope with this (depending on how it’s been installed)

    J

    steve-g
    Free Member

    Ok, thanks all.

    We have a “friend of a friend” who has taken care of all our issues, serviced the boiler etc so will speak to him.

    Will also look at singles and new rather than second hand.

    Cheers

    yeager2004
    Free Member

    I’d be interested to hear any first hand experiences of upgrading radiators.

    Most of the radiators in my house are pretty old (am guessing installed in the 70s), and don’t have fins. The one in the hallway is pretty small too – so I’m thinking a double radiator might be more appropriate.

    As part of a planned renovation project, I am weighing up replacing them –in the hope that newer radiators will radiate out more heat.

    Replacing all the raditors and the plumber’s labour change is going to cost me a bit though, so I don’t want to spend a load of cash for minimal return.

    Cheers

    dooosuk
    Free Member

    I updated two single panel radiators in my house (1 in kitchen, 1 in hallway) to doubles.

    In the kitchen I also re-did all the pipework so that wasn’t an issue.

    In the hallway, the new rad was slightly smaller so I used a tail extender to make up the few cm’s difference and had enough movement in the pipes after taking a bit of floor board out. The hallway has a radiator cover anyway, so you can’t see that bodge.

    Before I did this, I looked up the output of the boiler and then did my best BTU calculations based on rough internet values for the types and sizes of radiators in my whole house. By my calcs I had head space of the extra output and thankfully all radiators are still getting hot and pumping out heat….although it’s taken a while to balance them all.

    stumpy01
    Full Member

    We did this to our house after finding that the original radiators got bloody hot, but none of the heat seemed to actually make it into the room.

    They were very old radiators, fairly flat with no convectors on the back.

    My Father-in-law is a retired plumber so got the radiators at trade & did all the work for us. It made a massive difference to the warmth of the house. We did a bit of fiddling around with matching the BTU’s of the radiators to the boiler capacity & the size of the rooms.
    In his opinion, the boiler is on the cusp of being too small for the size of the house. As soon as I said what it was, he did the typical intake of breath & proclaimed that he would have put the next size up in a house of this size to give it some headroom.

    Anyway…..some of the pipe ends had to be, erm, tweaked but it all fitted fine & while I think the radiators in the living room are somewhat on the large size I’ve just closed the lock shields to compensate & it works fine.
    Had we started with a new boiler & optimised each radiator for each room we would have probably had a better balanced system with smaller radiators in some rooms, but we weren’t at the stage of lifting floorboards to change pipe runs etc. so this was a good compromise.

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