Dave Plowman wrote:

In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

But without balancing, this can result in a rad not working at all
until the others are satisfied.



Yeah. So what? at least it comes on eventually.


Well, in my case, it's the kitchen that comes on last as it's the furthest
one from the boiler, pipe run wise. And that's probably the second room
you visit first thing...


..When I had TRV's fitted I just opened up all the balance valves.
Basically because the ones nea the boiler where the ones I wanted to
get hot quickly anyway...eventually the remote bedroom ones would come
on...


I can't quite follow your reasoning. A well balanced system can do without
TRVs altogether. Adding them to one which is, is merely the icing on the
cake. Using them to cure an unbalanced system is a bodge and serves no
purpose, given that anyone can balance up a system given the inclination.



Its very hard to balance a large house with any rads. I gave up and
fitted TRV's everywhere except the bathroom, and unbalanced the lot, and
turned the stat to max.

Worked extremely well until I pulled the whole house down :-)

This allowed me precise control of every room - something you can't do
easily with a straight 'turn it on a bit' type regulator, and a red hot
bathroom, which is fine by me :-)


Its obviously better to fit stats in every room and zone valves and AND
the valve outputs back to the pump...but frankly as an improvement on an
old rired system, TRV's and whack up teh stat works, is cheap, and who
cares if some rads hog everything till the rooms are warm?

If you do care, balance as well.