House Heat Wireless Radiator valve - will not open beyond 61%

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  • longview
    Automated Home Lurker
    • Dec 2010
    • 6

    House Heat Wireless Radiator valve - will not open beyond 61%

    Have just bought a number of House Heat Radiator valves and thermostats to replace Honeywell radiator thermostats and a hall thermostat.

    9 of the valves and room thermostats work just fine but with 3 the valves will not open more than 61 % even when I set the temperature to 30c.

    The 3 valves are on towel rail type rads. The old honeywell stats are listed as 1024B for the radiators that work and 1026A for the towel rads that max out at 61%.

    Anyone have any idea what is going on here ? Each towel rail rad gets hot so that isn't a practical problem. It would just feel better if the valve could open to show 99%
  • toscal
    Moderator
    • Oct 2005
    • 2061

    #2
    Only thing I can think of is it may require an adapter to work the valve properly.
    IF YOU CAN'T FIX IT WITH A HAMMER, YOU'VE GOT AN ELECTRICAL PROBLEM.
    Renovation Spain Blog

    Comment

    • russell_allen
      Automated Home Jr Member
      • Oct 2010
      • 25

      #3
      That sounds odd - I believe the first thing the actuators do when you attach them to the radiator is work out the correct positions for 0% and 100%.

      The actuators have quite a wide range of positions, so that they can cover all the variations in different radiator valves. When you first put batteries in, the valve opens fully. When you then fit it onto the radiator, I believe the actuator:

      1. Begins closing until it feels slight resistance from the valve pin and sets this to the 100% position
      2. Continues closing until it feels full resistance from the valve and sets this to the 0% position.
      3. Repeats the above cycle a few times to verify things.

      So my advice would be to remove the batteries from the actuator and take it off the radiator, then try and refit it?

      Russ
      Russell's Home Automation Blog

      Comment

      • longview
        Automated Home Lurker
        • Dec 2010
        • 6

        #4
        Thanks toscal and Russell.

        I have tried taking the batteries out, resetting etc. This happens with three valves on 3 different rads.

        Housetechsolutions suggested placing a penny inside the valve but this made no difference - good or bad.

        the value is clearly working at O as no heat is allowed into the rad but stops opening at 61 to 74%. ( even at 61% the rad is very hot )

        My system is going to have to be drained in a few weeks so I will probably just replace the valves on the rads to work with the HouseHeat control.

        Can anyone let me know though ? the pin on the valve on the rad goes in and out ? when is the valve fully open ? when in or out ?

        Next step is to wire up the boiler connect. It really is a pain to have the main house stat turn off the boiler when the hall temp is reached stopping other rads from working. Setting the main stat higher simply wastes energy and produces noise from the Hal rad ( no valve)

        Still can not decide whether to leave one rad with no stat. The boiler is a new condensing one with a bypass but conflicting views mean that I will probably take this one step at a time

        Comment

        • russell_allen
          Automated Home Jr Member
          • Oct 2010
          • 25

          #5
          Originally posted by longview View Post
          the value is clearly working at O as no heat is allowed into the rad but stops opening at 61 to 74%. ( even at 61% the rad is very hot )
          I found the same with all of my radiators - they seem to get to full temperature when the valve is only 60 or 70% open, which makes sense as all my rads are fed off two zones, each of which is 15mm pipe. So a quarter of the internal dimension on a 15mm pipe is probably the same as the size of the valve opening when it's at 60%.

          the pin on the valve on the rad goes in and out ? when is the valve fully open ? when in or out ?
          When the pin is out, the valve is open. There's a plunger inside the valve that needs to be pushed down to seal the water flow vertically from the radiator tails.

          Still can not decide whether to leave one rad with no stat. The boiler is a new condensing one with a bypass but conflicting views mean that I will probably take this one step at a time
          My advise is do NOT use the boiler's built in bypass, instead get a bypass valve fitted. When I did my install I fitted one myself, only cost about 20 quid. I also seem to remember reading that the valve should be fitted some way from the boiler, so in my case my downstairs pipes run as a loop with the pressure valve joining the ends away from the boiler, and the radiators each plumbed into both halves of the loop.

          Russ
          Russell's Home Automation Blog

          Comment

          • longview
            Automated Home Lurker
            • Dec 2010
            • 6

            #6
            Originally posted by russell_allen View Post

            My advise is do NOT use the boiler's built in bypass, instead get a bypass valve fitted. When I did my install I fitted one myself, only cost about 20 quid. I also seem to remember reading that the valve should be fitted some way from the boiler, so in my case my downstairs pipes run as a loop with the pressure valve joining the ends away from the boiler, and the radiators each plumbed into both halves of the loop.

            Russ
            Ok - will ask the plumber to do this. If I do this will I be able to have valves on all rads controlled by the Boiler connect ? when the last rad stops requesting hot water I assume that the Boiler connect cuts off the heat, with pump continues for a few mins and then stops

            Comment

            • russell_allen
              Automated Home Jr Member
              • Oct 2010
              • 25

              #7
              Originally posted by longview View Post
              Ok - will ask the plumber to do this. If I do this will I be able to have valves on all rads controlled by the Boiler connect ? when the last rad stops requesting hot water I assume that the Boiler connect cuts off the heat, with pump continues for a few mins and then stops
              That's right - the boiler should circulate water for a few minutes to prevent the water temperature continuing to go up in the boiler while it's cooling down.

              Re the pressure valve, if you haven't seen one, it's just like a spring-loaded version of a radiator valve that sits directly between the feed from and return to the boiler, and you can adjust the spring tension. When the water pressure goes above whatever tension you've put in the spring, it pushes open the valve and releases into the return feed to the boiler.

              When you do get your plumber to fit one, can you do me a favour and let me know where he fits it? I'm still not sure I've got mine in the best place - instinct tells me near the boiler is good, not sure where I read that it's bad.

              Thanks,

              Russ
              Russell's Home Automation Blog

              Comment

              • longview
                Automated Home Lurker
                • Dec 2010
                • 6

                #8
                russell - not sure if I have described my set up correctly. I have a Vaillant eco tech plus boiler located in my garage. The bypass is not actually in the boiler casing but about a foot below the bolier.

                anyway when I have seen my plumber - will report back.

                Comment

                • fredd500
                  Automated Home Jr Member
                  • Jun 2009
                  • 29

                  #9
                  My belief is that they are pretty intelligent devices and think about how much they need to open (or close) in order to obtain the temperature you desire. The thing with radiators is that they continue to pump heat into a room even when they are fully closed - the water remaining in them is of course still hot - so the last thing you want is them to open 100%, heat the room and then close to 0% as the temperature will continue to rise beyond what you are requesting. This behavior is exactly what we are trying to avoid by buying automated controllers.

                  I came to this conclusion by having the thermostats and actuators in place before I wired in my interlock - when the boiler was off (because the old timer told it to be), the actuators opened a little, waited a while, realised that the temperature wasn't rising so opened a little more, waited and kept on going like that.

                  As a test, switch off your boiler and allow the thermostats to still try and control the heat. Whacking them up to 30 should open them quite a bit. Leave them a while and keep watch, when the temperature doesn't start rising, they should open a bit more, then a bit more and so on. If they never open fully then either your room is too warm already or I suspect you do have something faulty.

                  Hope this helps
                  Chris

                  Automating my home in a family friendly way - My blog: http://www.cpmills.com/

                  Comment

                  • russell_allen
                    Automated Home Jr Member
                    • Oct 2010
                    • 25

                    #10
                    Alternately of course you could put your thermostat to "MANU", and scroll up to "ON" - I believe this should always set the actuator to 100% regardless of the measured temperature?

                    Russ
                    Russell's Home Automation Blog

                    Comment

                    • longview
                      Automated Home Lurker
                      • Dec 2010
                      • 6

                      #11
                      Originally posted by fredd500 View Post

                      I

                      As a test, switch off your boiler and allow the thermostats to still try and control the heat. Whacking them up to 30 should open them quite a bit. Leave them a while and keep watch, when the temperature doesn't start rising, they should open a bit more, then a bit more and so on. If they never open fully then either your room is too warm already or I suspect you do have something faulty.

                      Hope this helps
                      Have done as you suggest. After some time of manually setting 30 c the stat value increased to 94%. The room temp however was only 20 c.

                      I think 2 things are important here. 1) The rad which are giving me this problem are towel rail type rads 2) the rooms are small - bathrooms.

                      Things work in the sense that when the temp is set low the rad turns off and when it comes on it heats the room.

                      But all the same I should have been able to open fully - so to me this means changing the values. I don't want 30c but I should be able to set things up to open fully.

                      All my other normal rad work perfectly - from 0 to 100% with warmer days only opening to 50 or 60%.

                      Comment

                      • longview
                        Automated Home Lurker
                        • Dec 2010
                        • 6

                        #12
                        I think I have found out what is happening. My normal rads can easily be driven to 100%. The towel rail go to 60% + and slowly increase but never to 100%.

                        If, however, I link a towel rail rad and a normal rad with the thermostat then I get 100% readings.

                        As I believe that the values and thermostats "Know" what is best I have now bought 2 more thermostats and accept the fact that the towel rail rads get very hot even when on 60% open.

                        Now I'm about to install a boiler connect. Does anyone know if I can run this with a timer switch so that heat is NOT called for during the night ?

                        Comment

                        • russell_allen
                          Automated Home Jr Member
                          • Oct 2010
                          • 25

                          #13
                          Originally posted by longview View Post
                          Now I'm about to install a boiler connect. Does anyone know if I can run this with a timer switch so that heat is NOT called for during the night ?
                          Hi Longview,

                          I'm not an electrician, but I believe you CAN do this - all that the boiler connect (and other timers) does is to open or close a switch to allow power to flow into the boiler.

                          Therefore, you can connect daisy-chain timers together so that when either is off, no power goes into the boiler. (Alternately you can theoretically connect them in parallel so that when either is on, the boiler is on)

                          Hope that makes sense,

                          Russ
                          Russell's Home Automation Blog

                          Comment

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