advice on jacking up a radiator

bob young

Disconnect radiator, adjust piping connection, re-connect rad. you may need a plumber. easy job but tricky if you don't know how to do it. result is either perfect or no good. nothing in between. good luck

Angela_2

I believe that the reason that my coldest radiators won't heat up has to do with the pitch of the pipe in the floor. After the house was built, both front gables sagged. There is a radiator in each of these gables, sharing a riser with a first floor radiator. Yesterday, while the first floor radiator was really hot and blowing air like crazy (I had the heat all the way up, and the adjustable air vent all the way open, to try to test this out), the valve, pipe and radiator in the gable stayed ice cold even with its air vent unscrewed and off.

Heeding the story in the online book on venting "too fast," I dialed the downstairs radiator all the way down. The upstairs radiator pipe, valve, and two sections of the upstairs radiator finally got hot.

But only two sections. I think I can't fix this problem only with venting. I suspect that I need to get that radiator up off the floor an inch or two, pulling the valve and pipe with it. The idea is to pull that pipe in the floor up a little bit, thereby correcting the pipe pitch problem that was probably created when the gable sagged. I don't think the pipe will break, the run can't be more than 6 feet. I just have to get the pipe up the distance that the gable sagged plus about 1/3 of an inch or so.

Does this reasoning make sense? And if so, what is the best way to MOVE that heavy radiator up off the floor? I.E. what is the best tool to get it up without wrecking the wooden floor underneath it?

Big Ed_4

Using a simple tool

Make a leverage jack using a block and small Lenght of 2x4, step on jack as you shim up radiator. I use paint sticks.

You may want to install a king vent on top of that riser. Which is a main vent piped in before that top radiator.

adambuild

?

Why not calculate the necessaery rise in the horizontal run and replace the vertical nipples with shortened ones accordingly?

Angela_2

it's all in the walls and in the floor. can't afford to wreck those things just to get at the pipes for this radiator. it's one room out 10.