This is a silly idea

Koan

@RadiatorLabs
I used to work for Rotron....can't help but wonder?

RadiatorLabs

VBLU and Chris - yes a vent-based version is in the works. It's hard to beat a fan for CFM, though!

R value of our insulation is R3. Essentially, we don't want too high of an insulation value, or you rely too heavily on the fan (we don't want it running 24/7)

MilanD

@VDBLU @Koan

Motor-operated cover? But, but, but ... where will my plants go??!

Koan

My sister roasted her goldfish once this way!

Sailah

I believe that's called poaching, not roasting....

Koan

Technically I think you are correct, but I'm not sure the fish cared about the nuance!

WayneMech

Kudos to Mr. Cox, for filling a "need", and making money from it. This is the American way! People can only use the "tools" (what they can understand, and affect) in their "tool box" (their mind) to control their situation. This device is for people who trust computers (I don't), live in an apartment (I don't), have radiator supplied heat (embarrassing, but I don't), are too warm, can not (or will not) get the landlord to address the problem, and have the cash to get the techno-blankie-thingy. If they want to pay Mr. Cox to make them more comfortable (and IN CONTROL!), without harming anyone else, then "God bless them, one and all!".

CrowEater54

We've had these installed in our 100+ apartment building. They're a real problem. As a shareholder, I was promised there would be savings on heating bills, meet carbon emission levels and … that individual apartments would have control over the heat. So, apartments with too much heat, could lower it, and those that were too cold could increase it. This is definitely not the case. There is no control. These things do not work, and my apartment is now not just cold, but there's virtually no heat at all. These boxes look ugly, they're big and they don't work. We've had significant issues with condensation as a result … we've had to place towels on the floor wherever there's a cozy, we have icicles on the inside of our windows, we have blistering/peeling paint on the wall/sills where the cozies are located. The only information about this product is generated by the company selling them …. can't find any independent reviews or objective information. Just infomercial-like articles. Our board signed up for this on a 15-year subscription; I suspect this was a grave error of judgement.

UPDATE:

As it turns out, across the building there's a lot of issues with the installation. Problems with condensation, mold, heat too high, heat too low, inability to control the heat. There are some key issues that need to be resolved:

1. Coop did not check if there were issues with the boiler/heating system … this may be causing the condensation but TBC. Also, the board/management company did not check if every radiator was actually turned on prior to installing cozies (!).
2. Kelvin Cozy has a batch of faulty control systems, and it might be that several of these have been inadvertently installed in the building—these are being checked.
3. The temperature sensor on the front of the Cozy panel, needs to have at least 4ft of clear space to accurately read the room temperature. This was not made known at the time of choosing the system (at least according to our Coop Board). If there is something in front of the sensor - like furniture, this will cause the temperature reading to be inaccurate.
4. Many of the cozy covers need to have extra 'trims' installed, to deal withe a gap between the cover and the wall. This needs to be done in a manner that allows the cozy to be removed for radiator inspections/repairs.

So … it's a wait and see. There seems to be pretty bad communication between our board and the Kelvin company. No telling who is responsible for that. But it's also become apparent that the building's Super has not received training on reading the data output, so that adjustments can be made accordingly.

Credit where credit is due, the Kelvin company have been very responsive to issues raised. Our coop board/management company less so.

No-one in our building is happy at the moment. Apartments are either too cold or too hot, and we don't seem to be able to control it yet.

JakeCK

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1837310#Comment_1837310

Please elaborate? What you're arguing makes zero sense as they should not affect the functioning of the system at all. If its cold and the fan isn't working, take it off. The radiator is still hot. If the radiator isn't hot something is wrong with the heating system unrelated to these blankets with fans.

ariccio

@CrowEater54 you really should elaborate. I suspect many people would like to hear more details.

Are the radiators inside the cozy units getting hot? Are the fans on the cozy broken or otherwise not turning on? Etc...

Although I have concerns with parts of the radiator cozy concept, I'm reading your post with the knowledge that there's a very strong draw for buildings to install them to mask much deeper heat distribution system issues, *instead* of fixing those distribution systems, through zero fault of Kelvin/Radiator Labs.

I've often wondered if a radiator cozy would worsen distribution problems if (e.g.) traps in 2 pipe systems are left failed open, it could force *more* steam into the return and thus worsen distribution.

mattmia2

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1841795#Comment_1841795

there are not enough agree buttons for this. the solutions to the issues in the article isn't sticking a 1970's toilet cover over your radiator. you have to fix the things that are broken or were incorrectly modified that are causing noise and uneven heating. there are already ways to control a too hot 2 pipe or 1 pipe radiator.

ariccio

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1841884#Comment_1841884

The way I see it, I actually like the idea of the radiator cozy as a whole, it seems like a good option for one pipe steam as is, but I specifically would want to see a few more changes before I could endorse it for two pipe steam specifically, (e.g. to somehow modulate the supply valve on two pipe steam radiators)

The way I see it, it's most valuable, very valuable actually, if you've already tuned the building heat distribution to be close to the level of heat that residents desire by (e.g.) dialing each radiator in with orifice plates or something. It doesn't have to be exact, but the closer the better.

In my head, the way I think about it is like the design of a control system for modern engines as compared to old carbureted systems. They all come from the factory with extremely thorough multidimensional default mappings for fuel injection parameters, ignition timing, throttle control, and dozens of other outputs, and then on top of that they use realtime active feedback from a plethora of sensors that measure every possible environmental variable that could differ from that in the lab where the engineers designed the tables, to produce nearly perfect combustion in every imaginable use case. It gives us the wonderful gift of engines that are much less than half the size of my dad's old muscle car, with at least as much power, a hundredfold less local air pollution, 80% less fuel consumption, and no need to hold your mustache at just the right angle to start it in the cold.

There are still limits though. Bad plugs. Vacuum leaks. Lying sensors. Transmissions with missing gears. No control system can fully compensate for these things. They'll do amazing things: skip injection/ignition for unreliable plugs, integrate data from good sensors to offset lying sensors; even ridiculous things, as some engines will start alternatively skipping firing half the cylinders if the engine is overheating, essentially using it as a kind of internal air pumping. But it's still a limp at best.

If you throw a cozy onto a system with a bad condensate pump, a bazillion open traps, and with a super who would rather jack up the pressure than learn that there are traps that fail open (the apparent norm for NYC)... It can't compensate for the sociological problem.

Now if I were to go to work for Radiator Labs/Kelvin (and hey, guys, newly unemployed software developer here! Reach out! 😆), what I'd want to consider implementing is a way to modulate the supply valve to only let in as much steam as you can extract heat from while discharging condensate at no greater than 160ish°F. It would be a bit difficult but also entirely possible to blend that into the fan speed control scheme. In theory, if two way communication is possible between the boiler controller and the radiator cozy, you could calculate the exact minimal amount of sensible heat you need to remove as subcooling to prevent flash steam from normal vacuum return and/or subatmospheric steam. Heck, I suspect that means you'd have out of the box support for @izhadano's vacuum boost system for free!

---

For your Tuesday morning entertainment:

The plan I've been toying with in my head for my building, for what I'd do to get my own coop in balance to later get the most out of a cozy install, is as such:

The first pass would be to do a building wide trap replacement + orifice plate install in the summer. You'd also install TRV compatible valves if they're not compatible already, but not the trv controller itself. Instead of matching the EDR, I'd actually think about deliberately undersizing the orifice plates 2 or 3 sizes. The real trick that I'm going to imagine exploiting is to actually ask the resident about the heat they've been receiving. That's a source of info that's otherwise thrown away. If they're always so hot that they keep the radiator off, 4 sizes down. If they keep their radiators on, but are usually too warm, 3 sizes down. If they like where it's at normally, 2 sizes down. If they're way too cold, only 1 size down from the EDR. The first pass guarantees there's no steam getting through into the return. You tell the residents to tell you immediately if they're very hot or very cold, as soon as it gets cold enough outside for heat.

Now the system is in a guaranteed not bad state, a bit like eliminating undefined behavior in software, and we can optimize it further. The steam traps should very rarely fully close - only left as a "belt and suspenders" safety in case weird things happen down the road.

Then when winter starts, you set the pressuretrol as low as it will possibly go, set whatever control you have to run longer cycles at this lower pressure limit, and begin a second pass. Anybody who is still too hot gets a smaller orifice plate. If just a few people are much too cold, they get a one size larger orifice plate as long as it's still below the EDR, and ideally where possible, swap out their radiators for a larger one to keep subcooling the condensate. If a bunch of people are much too cold, you nudge the pressure up to 1 psi or so. Anybody still cold gets one size larger orifice plate. You're still going to be overheating some people, but it will be closer now.

At this point you make a 3rd pass and install the TRV control heads on the valves OR install a radiator cozy. This is also the point where you could install a kind of analog version of a radiator cozy to boost heat output for cold-sensitive tenants - a 120°F thermostatic switch in series with a PC fan on the radiator coils could really extract a lot more heat without any complicated circuitry, and would work nicely with a TRV.

Oof, that got long. And now it's really late. Why did I type all that again? 🤪

mattmia2

zone valves and thermostats for 2 pipe steam have been around for like 100 years.

one pipe is more complicated because turning large numbers of radiators off is more problematic, you need to have it mostly balanced then use whatever zoning you are doing to turn the vent on and off but not all at once. it could pretty easily be done with an electrically controlled valve between the vent and the radiator and some control to shut the boiler down periodically.

thinking covering the radiator throughout the building is the answer just shows they don't understand steam

the system not being built as zoned is the result of not wanting to spend money on the problem

Jamie Hall

Since this seems to still be rambling along…

A few thoughts.

First, remember that one pipe steam (and related, two pipe air vent systems) can be controlled by adjusting the venting on the radiators — but only if the system cycles off to 0 psig at regular, rather short, intervals (say 10 minutes to 20 minutes — no more. Cyclegaurds are useful times sometimes!)

Second, two pipe — vapour or otherwise — can be controlled by modulating or fully opening or closing the inlet valves.

Thus any steam system can be controlled.

Third, any steam system will work best and most efficiently if any local control is minimal — which means someone took the trouble to get it well balanced with everything working as it should to begin with.

Now a few random comments… on modern cars. It is quite true that if all of the various sensors and computers and controls are working as they are meant to, they can do wonderful things with relatively small engines, and material science and mechanical engineering have improved so that the small, very highly stressed engines don't blow up much ore often than the bigger ones of years gone by. On the other hand, even one bad ground can cause them to be real dogs if they run at all — and a bad ECU can land them in the junkyard. They don't actually get much better economy, by the way, than the old engines did, given the weight of the vehicle and its aerodynamic drag. I'll grant that you do have to be a bit fussier about tuneups (before someone yells — hybrid fuel/electric rigs, properly sorted, can improve both mileage and performance, sometimes radically).

And another — much of the modern thrust for more computer control of things comes from a desire not so much as to improve performance, but to allow some nerd who doesn't know which end of a screwdriver to use to get the benefits of optimum performance without an understanding of how things work, or any desire to learn it.

Another, seen much more in combat aircraft than cars but also in automotive, is to use the speed of response of a computer controlling power assisted controls to extend the safe envelope of performance farther — electronic stability control on cars, for instance, or advanced fly by wire systems on aircraft (the poster child there is the Saab Grippen fighter jet — the best in the world).

delcrossv

"And another — much of the modern thrust for more computer control of things comes from a desire not so much as to improve performance, but to allow some nerd who doesn't know which end of a screwdriver to use to get the benefits of optimum performance without an understanding of how things work, or any desire to learn it."

QFT.👍️

EdTheHeaterMan

What is all the fuss about. If you are a tenant of one of those steam heated buildings that seem to have some apartments/condos that overheat regularly, you can just go to Home Depot and get a Water Heater Blanket like this and cover a portion of your radiator. Not the whole thing, just the part that is getting too hot. Leave a little bit of the radiator exposed to give you just enough heat.

I'm applying for a patent on this one.

ARobertson13

I believe Cozy, the manufacturer of which is now named Kelvin [It so happens to be near my home in Brooklyn ]. This Cozy device, aside from heating system issues such as broken supply valves, non opening or closing radiator vents and bad boiler controllers, will only possibly work if it operates during certain parts of the heating cycle. Based on what CrowEater54 stated, this appears not to be the case.