Large radiator

fabaze12

I have a large radiator in my living room. The bottom third is often cold. The top never gets as hot as the others around the house. What's interesting is that it has 2 steam vents on it. An adjustable vent-rite about half of the way up and what looks like a straight vent right at the top of the radiator. Is this set up correctly?

gfrbrookline

No, the top vent is for hot water systems to bleed the air out. Does it let steam out of the radiator or is it turned off? If it is turned off you can leave it alone, if not remove it and plug the hole.

What is the vent-rite set to?

fabaze12

@gfrbrookline, I'm not sure If it is off. Right after we moved in, whenever the boiler ran, we noticed a haze in our living room. We thought it was the paint burning off the radiators. They were just painted recently. I wonder if it was steam.

Why would someone put that straight vent there. Strange....


I believe we have the vent-rite set to 8. We tried a few different settings with the same results.

We have a smaller one in our dining that never really gets hot unless we crank the TStat to 72.

Jamie Hall

Just remember that the question isn't "does the radiator get hot", it's "is the room comfortable".

Alan (California Radiant) Forbes

My guess is that that radiator was once on a hot water system and after it moved to your house, no one bothered to remove the manual air vent. Your house is at least 100 years old, no? Lots can happen in that time.