Balancing rads - determining proximity to boiler

[nervous123]

Hi there, been trying to balance my rads today.
Discovered that all 6 rads upstairs heat up very quickly and all pretty much simultaneously (within a few seconds of each other). So it's a bit difficult to determine which is closest to the boiler.
Downstairs they are sluggish to heat up and some don't get hot.

Do I want to close ALL the upstairs Rads by the same amount of turn, seeing as they all come on almost simultaneously?

 

[dontknowitall]

Sounds like your pump might be giving up the ghost.

 

[AWheating]

based on a 2/3 bed house with one zone

a basic rule would be turn all upstairs radiators down tio 1/3 open on the lockshield side, then downstairs open the lockshield on the furthest rad fully and move back towards the boiler one rad at a time and gradually reducing the lockshield side down to about 1/3 to 1/2 way at the closes to the boiler. Turn heating on with trvs fully open, if any rads struggle then open the lockshield side alittle more, any rads get hot really quickly compared to all others then turn down lockshield alittle. ensure the rad in the room with the roomstat does not heat up quicker than any of the others.

this wont give you a perfect set up but will be better than alot engineers will bother doing and if you get a fairly even distribution of heat then thats good.

 

[nervous123]

Boiler is a 1 year old Vaillant ecotec 630 plus, likewise 1 year old cylinder Telford Tempest.

All upstairs rads are old as are 4 of the 6 downstairs.

Would you still say pump is the problem?

 

[AWheating]

not if it works when the system is balanced correctly. upstairs rads always get warmer alot easier compared to downstairs due to having less restrictions/pipe runs.

 

[kay-jay]

not if it works when the system is balanced correctly. upstairs rads always get warmer alot easier compared to downstairs due to having less restrictions/pipe runs.

+1 and the natural tendency of heat rising

 

[fuzzy]

could be pump or balancing, try to eliminate the balancing to begin with