Too hot upstairs; cold downstairs - gas heat

Melissa_3

Would those be the ones upstairs or downstairs?

Melissa_3

Too Hot upstairs; cold downstairs

With another winter approaching I can't continue with the way our system works. We have gas heat with hot water radiators and it becomes too cold to stay downstairs but hot and uncomfortable upstairs. The thermostat is located downstairs.

What to do? Other than sleep with the windows open.

Joe_48

Im not a professional but.... did you try bleeding the radiator a bit? This may help.

Joe_48

valve bleeding

From what I understand, air will get caught in the radiator, thus not letting the hot water flow through the entire space. By bleeding the radiator, you will remove the air and allow for the hot water to run freely. Therefore, I would start with bleeding the ones that are cold but it couldn't hurt to bleed them all. Like I said earlier though, by no means am I a professional, but this is a good starting point.

Thad English

Rads

This may sound obvious, but....make sure that the valves to and from the cold radiators are all the way open and not all the way closed. Then bleed your rads. all of them. Hopefully it is as simple as that.
Good luck.

-T

Plumbob

if your thermostat is downstairs but it is too cold downstairs, it would appear that the thermostat may be set too low! Do you have your thermostat set at a comfortable temperature (maybe 70), and if so, is the temperature (as read by the thermostat or other device) getting to 70 or not?

Too hot in rooms that are far from the thermostat, now that's a more common problem in an older house. It is difficult for a thermostat in one place to control the heat somewhere else. Even if your system was originally well-balanced, it may not be balanced now, perhaps because you or a previous owner added attic insulation and/or double-glazed windows. Also, people had lower standards for temperature uniformity than we do now. Finally, some near-thermostat radiators may be shut off or have air in them, unbalancing the system...open all radiators near the thermostat completely, and bleed them.

Is the upstairs too hot even though the radiators there are shut off and you have checked that the radiators are COLD? That is very unlikely. More likely, you have not turned the radiators off, or they leak and cannot be turned off. If the latter, you'll have to spend money to get new radiator valves in the too-hot rooms.

Since labor is the main expense, it is only a little more money to get 'automatic' valves (thermostatic radiator valves, or TRVs), these should be less than $200 each installed. You just set them and they hold the temperature by opening and closing as needed. In our house, TRVs made all the difference to the overheating upstairs. You can't really keep an old house with radiators evenly heated without using TRVs.