My life is ridiculous

[cosmolinguist]

I just had a big rant at Andrew about how much I hate radiators -- it started because I said "I have to buy some pliers" and then realized that I was saying I needed pliers for my house to be at a convenient temperature and I hate to get all entitled-first-world person about this...but that's exactly what I am.

"You know what happens at my parents' house?" I said. They have a thermostat, and whatever temperature you set it to, the whole house is that!" Our house has a thermostat, too, but the temperature it gives you isn't anything to do with reality because the radiators seem to have two settings: full blast and off, so the house is an interesting patchwork of places that are too warm and places that are too cold. All the radiators have little knobs you can twiddle but these seem to be some kind of placebo, allowing you the impression that you have any control over the ambient temperature but the radiators stay either dangerously hot or disappointingly frigid whatever you do.

Andrew helpfully said things like "Believe it or not, central heating wasn't even a thing in Brtiain until about fifteen years ago."

"I do believe it!" I said. "Because central heating is still included in descriptions of places up for rent." And I know we got asked if this house we were going to buy had central heating. Even my parents didn't ask that -- and, remember, they had to ask if my house had windows.

More than most of the things I've had to learn how to fix or deal with since we bought the house, the radiators piss me off. For all my joking entitlement, my real problem is that they are entirely outside my experience. They don't work and I don't know why and I don't even know where to begin. But I know I have to, because it doesn't stop getting cold just because I don't feel up to dealing with it.

And my reward for sorting this out will not be enjoying the warm and dry; it'll be Andrew whinging that he's too hot.

Comments

[k_a_webb]

You might need to bleed them, because that's something you find if they haven't been bled. Personally I don't know how to do that, but you should be able to find on the Internet somewhere.

[rmc28]

Lots of helpful sites (UK based too!)

http://www.diydata.com/problem/central_heating/bleed.php
http://www.homeserve.com/help-advice/boiler-heating/how-to-bleed-a-radiator

and a video in case that's better for you:
http://www.britishgas.co.uk/products-and-services/boilers-and-central-heating/cover/preparing-for-winter.html

The tool you need is like this:
https://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/product/details/lockshield-3-legged-radiator-valve-key

(We have a Machine Mart around the corner, that's where I got my radiator key, the last time we were having issues with the central heating system. It turned out to be an issue with the pump, which the plumber who installed it came back and fixed. There are probably other places to get a radiator key.)

[cosmolinguist]

Thank you for the links, and for providing a necessary reminder of what a radiator key actually is (I know I've been told before, but I've never seen one and I've long since forgotten what they look like and what they're for; I know that people talk about keys and bleeding whenever radiators are mentioned, but I've never had to use one before.

And I know I could've looked up the links myself, but I was just at the end of my tether (and my energy) this morning...I think that was really my problem, not this practical level at all but just being unable to deal with how overwhelmed I was feeling. You helped with that, and I'm really grateful for that.

[rmc28]

I'm glad. I wasn't sure if googling-for-you was a good thing or not, but got enough of an "argh, where to start" vibe off your post that I thought I would. Also it helped that I have been through how-the-fuck-does-this-work with regard to radiators recently enough to remember.

(If ever I do this and it's not welcome, please also tell me!)

[cosmolinguist]

Thank you, and I will. But your instincts were absolutely right, and I think in general I'm far more likely to need help I don't know how to ask for than to be annoyed that someone presumed I need help when I don't think I did. I appreciate your concern to not do that, but that's one reason why I think you're unlikely to overstep with me, if that makes any sense. :)

[rmc28]

Ugh, all the sympathy.

We did fix our central heating properly a few years ago, and it cost us about £2.5k-£3k in total: new (much more efficient) boiler, descaling of the radiators, new control system, remote control thermostat, and proper thermostatic valves on every radiator. That was with a good local plumber & her favourite heating engineer, and it was about half the quote given us by British Gas for the same work.

(And Tony still wants every room colder than I do, so I have lots of jumpers.)

[cosmolinguist]

That sounds amazing. That's what I want now! Of course it will have to wait until we have some money but that sounds totally worth it to me. I am glad to know that such things are possible. :)

[askygoneonfire]

Yep, I was just coming to suggest investing in thermostats on each radiator; even if you only did that rather than the near-complete replacement suggested above I think you'd find it made a big difference to the ambient temperature, as well as your fuel bills as it improves efficiency dramatically. The issue with your house-wide thermostat is very likely it's not in the right room/location to accurately set the temperature for the rest of the house. And like everyone else has said, bleeding your cold radiators may well dramatically improve things - it's really easy to do but I see you have instructive links above for that.

I thought central heating was more common than it is before I moved to a city with a large number old houses owned by landlords and suddenly I was willing to pay considerably more in rent for GCH instead of electric storage heaters; it's possible to be spoiled even within England when it comes to decent heating!

[cosmolinguist]

I grew up somewhere where you'd actually die in the winters without good heating, so I guess I am about as spoiled as it gets: there's a lot of incentive to make heating efficient and functional there which there just isn't here where everyone thinks cold and damp is inevitable and character-building.

[askygoneonfire]

Are you trying to suggest cold and damp *isn't* character building?! *world falling down around ears face*



:-p

[rmc28]

With the descaling, British Gas wanted to sell us a "powerflush" service, and the local heating engineer said something along the lines of he could do that, but actually what he'd do was come and introduce some descaling fluid to the system a few weeks before the install, and could I make sure all my radiators were on at least a bit so it would get around everything.

I think the idea was not to have a load of crud from 20+ year-old radiators circulating through a brand new shiny boiler, which makes sense.

[magister]

You need a radiator key. You should be able to get one from the pound shop up the road.

[davidgillon]

Oh, we've had central heating for more than 15 years. My parent's 45 yo house wasn't built with it, but was converted pretty soon after - of course it wasn't exactly great central heating and a lot of places took longer to convert. The house got much warmer when it was redone with a modern thermostat and boiler three years ago, and better still when the oldest radiators were replaced with new ones.

It should be reasonably apparent if radiators need bleeding - they'll be hot at the bottom, cold at the top. But that's about it for user-serviceable components.

[cosmolinguist]

I didn't think it'd literally been only fifteen years -- Andrew is prone to exaggeration, especially in ways that would dismay me -- so I wasn't too worried about the specifics, but the point that central heating is less ubiquitous and evolved than I'd like it to be was certainly taken. :)

I've got all of the radiators at least sometimes working now, except the one in the kitchen, which I think is probably leaky if it's not turned off. So I've left that off; I don't dawdle in the kitchen, and of course it's full of heat sources which, since it's also tiny, heat it up well enough most of the time I'm in there.

[andrewhickey.info]

What I actually said was that it wasn't until about 15 years ago that it was normal in the UK. That's a slight exaggeration -- apparently "households with central heating increased from 35% in 1971 to 92% in 2000", but certainly I'd say it wasn't expected that houses would have central heating until the mid-90s.

[davidgillon]

That's a few percent more without central heating than I expected - which may be a result of growing up in the wilds of Durham where you really want it!

[(Anonymous)]

But radiators are central heating, aren't they?

[askygoneonfire]

Nope, radiators are radiators. You can have multiple radiators in a house - for example wall mounted electric storage heaters - and if they are not controlled and heated by a central system - i.e a boiler which pumps heat into all of the radiators in the house - then you haven't got central heating.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh good point. Central heating uses radiators, but not all radiators are controlled by central heating.

You can have standing plug-in radiators too, like I had in my third-year college room, so I really shouldn't have been so forgetful.

[askygoneonfire]

Yep, that's exactly it :-)

[jojomojo.livejournal.com]

Sorry about that; it's tripped me up since I moved back here too (and I'm pretty cold tolerant so I don't have the heating on much anyway). I blame our general lack of snow :/

[ruudboy.livejournal.com]

Hang on, they have radiators in America! There was an episode of Friends once where the radiator was stuck on full blast over Christmas.

[jojomojo.livejournal.com]

NYC has pretty ancient housing stock by American standards, though...

[cosmolinguist]

This is not the first time I've had America Britsplained to me via an example from Friends. :)

[haggis.livejournal.com]

Andrew's talking nonsense - my parents bought a3 bed semidetached house in 1987 with central heating and the system wasn't new then.

For some reason, we still build houses on the cheap by not connecting them to the gas supply, hence the need to specify whether its got central heating :-(

[newandrewhickey.livejournal.com]

As I said on Holly's DW:

"What I actually said was that it wasn't until about 15 years ago that it was normal in the UK. That's a slight exaggeration -- apparently "households with central heating increased from 35% in 1971 to 92% in 2000", but certainly I'd say it wasn't expected that houses would have central heating until the mid-90s."

[diffrentcolours]

Also depends where you are - there was no gas supply to the road where my parents' house was built in the 80s, so it had oil heating.

[zammis.livejournal.com]

We are looking at houses with radiators, but with the idea we'll need to replace the whole system with new HVAC including AC before the following summer. We priced out some systems and there are some interesting options out there, used more in Europe than here. mini-split was one of them.