Radiator valves that pull water faster?

wishbear21

Hi everyone. Newbie learning about residential boilers here, sorry if I chose the wrong subject but I couldn't figure out which one hot water boilers belonged in!

I moved into my condo last year that has single pipe radiators. I'm on the first floor and last winter was ROUGH. It was so cold in my and my one first floor neighbor's units (who comes before me on the pipe line) that if we were renting, we could've filed a complaint with the city. I had two different boiler repair companies out over the winter, did all the maintenance I could inside, still too cold.

At our last board meeting a couple weeks ago, my neighbor on the other side of me (the very last person on the pipe line, furthest from the boiler) said that she had her valves replaced with ones that pull the heated water from the boiler quicker and that she doesn't have trouble staying warm. Now, she does spend the harshest months in Florida so maybe she doesn't know she has trouble, and I haven't seen any mention about valves that can do that during my googling. But I'm wondering if these 'special valves' do exist, could they be contributing to the coldness in our units? Causing the hot water to quickly bypass us in favor of her unit? The 1st floor folks across the courtyard don't seem to have as much trouble. If these valves do exist and can contribute to the issue, is our solution to add them to our own units, or get the board to take them out of hers somehow?

Thank you!

Jamie Hall

If you have one pipe radiators, they are steam -- not hot water (hot water always needs two pipes, and so do some steam systems, but not all). The "valves" you are talking about -- are these little valves mounted on the end of the radiator? Those would be called vents, usually, and their job is to release air -- but not steam -- from the radiator when the boiler is firing.

And yes, indeed, there are faster ones and slower ones. They are not the only reasons one radiator will heat faster than another, but they are one of the reasons.

How far across do your radiators get hot? If they get hot at all?

Can you perhaps post a picture of what you have now?

wishbear21

Yes, steam vents! Sorry, wrong terminology there. My radiators do get hot (the entire thing), and I'm usually fine if the temp outside is above 30 degrees, but I'm in Chicago. My small radiator in my bathroom has one of these in a 5 or 6 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08L5MXG9C/ref=twister_B08LPN5GNX?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1) and the rest were fitted with the adjustable ones (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072R1RR46/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1) but if I move the dial past 6 or 7 it starts to sound like my head is literally inside a boiling a tea kettle.

ethicalpaul

If your radiators are getting fully hot during calls for heat and your apartment is still too cold the whole time it may be that your radiators just plain aren't large enough.

If what you find is that your apartment is quite cold then it eventually heats up OK for awhile, then cools back down again, it might be that yes the other apartments are getting all the steam until their radiators fill completely.

Unfortunately it's an arms race. You can put in larger capacity vents but there's no guarantee it will help if the ones in the other unit are just as large and closer to the boiler. You would have to do something like have a consultant come in and time the radiators and specify appropriate sized vents for each apartment.

but then since the other apartments know this secret, they could just swap back out to the larger vents after that. This could be difficult.