Aeroplane on a conveyor belt, plumbing edition.

Would this work or would it cause issues?

I ask apropos of nothing, it’s just an image I tripped over. It feels like a Viz Top Tips article, “save money on buying one of those fancy vertical radiators by turning your existing radiators by 90 degrees!”

you’d have a pipe leaving at the top potentially? and you have to make sure you put the bleed valve that way up also i guess

Nice! I reckon it’d work. Seems no different to a towel rail, in principle?

No it won’t work.  The water will just go up oneside, along the top and down the other.  Vertical rads have the water passages arranged with restrictions so water does not short circuit it.

They hang on the wall hangers by dropping on in landscape so like that it would fall off and flood your house.

It’d work. It may not bleed fully (top right might be cold depending on the rad). I’m not sure it’d convect as well as it would if the fins were vertical though – would it generate eddies in the dips that would just be little areas of circulating hot air that never migrate up the rad?

Nah; your clothes would keep sliding off when you try to hang them on the side bit that was the top. Gravity, innit.

it will work inefficiently – assuming the exit is at the top of the rad, Most of the water will run up the left hand side as suggested above, so that side will get a lot of warmth, I guess there’ll be some circulation on the other side of the radiator just due to drag of water rushing up the left side, plus there’ll be heat exchange to that “stale” water anyway.

You can fit both valves at one end easily enough, swap the bleed valve to the top.

It’ll hang with a bit of fiddling and would work, but I have no idea how well

This didn’t work very well either…

Should work.

Hostel i was living in I took the radiator off the wall, laid it flat on the floor(bendy piping) and put the mattress on top of it. So I dont really think its orientation is relevant.

It will make a difference either inverted or sideways.  Hot water is less dense and more energetic.  In an inverted radiator, the bottom will never get hot – it may get warm.  In a sideways mounted radiator with the inlet at the bottom – hot water will move quickly through one side of the radiator, but unless there’s sufficient flow pressure, will take the shortest route to exit meaning you’ll be continually venting your hot water before it’s had a good chance to mix.

you’d have a pipe leaving at the top potentially? and you have to make sure you put the bleed valve that way up also i guess

There is a valve blanking plug in all four corners of a standard radiator.

Hostel i was living in I took the radiator off the wall, laid it flat on the floor(bendy piping) and put the mattress on top of it. So I dont really think its orientation is relevant.

Eh? Wouldn’t putting a mattress on top have a pretty negative effect on its job of radiating heat into the room?

And yes, I know radiators primarily work by convection, but my point is still valid 😛