Thoughts confirmed on my Parent's house...

ScottMP

Danfoss makes a goof line of Non electric thermostatic heads. You could do two things, one would be to replace all the valves with TRV and run constant circ. This allows each rad to be its own zone valve. As Dan has stated check for orifice's in the valves and returns, these would be used to balance the sytem when they put in the circulator. When it was a gravity system it would have been piped so that the top floor recieved the heat at the same time as the first floor. When the circulator was added many times orifice would be installed to slow down the express train to the third floor, it can be a night mare to balance if you don't know they are there.

A nice touch with conctant circ. is a warm weather shut down, to shut of the boiler during the summer months. This can be as simple as a set point control.

The second move would be to just install TRV's in the rooms where the heat is excessive. This would allow you to balance down those rooms to match the others that heat well.

Good Luck

Scott

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kframe

Thoughts confirmed on my Parent's house...

Talked with Dad this evening to wish him a Happy Father's Day, and he confirmed that when my Grandparents bought the house in 1943 it was a coal fired gravity hot water heating system which was changed to circulator driven when an oil furnace was installed in the early 1950s.

Which leads me to my next question.

Because of the vertical loop nature of a gravity system, it's not exactly wonderful with a circulator driven system, with radiators on all three floors being controlled by a single thermostat (which is located on the first floor, even worse).

My Mother is particularly unhappy with it, in the winter she gets ROASTED out of the bedroom as well as her office.

I'm wondering how hard it would be for me to install thermostatically controlled valves on a number of radiators in the house.

Where can I get them? Any tips for installing them?

Steamhead

We usually

install TRVs in bedrooms and kitchens. These are the rooms the owners generally want cooler than the rest of the house.

Since the thermostat is usually in a main living area, and since this are is usually fairly open, it makes no sense to use TRVs there. Bathrooms are best kept at full temperature to prevent condensation and mold.

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kframe

Exactly what I was figuring.

So I'm looking at installing no more than 5 of these critters.