Why did the plumber advise me to raise my radiator at an angle: secrets from an experienced craftsman
Good afternoon I want to share with you information that has completely changed my understanding of installing radiators.
I installed a heating system in my parents' house, so I considered myself a real craftsman. And last week I started installing heating in my own home. I called my best friend Alexander for help. Sashka is an experienced plumber; he worked for many years in the construction of luxury cottages. Well, who will help me if not him?
We started working. For several days they drilled the walls, pulled the pipes and installed the wiring. And when they started installing the radiators, I noticed: Alexander was not fixing them level, but at an angle.
The angle was very small - if you look from the side, it would not be noticeable.
But I didn't want my perfect heating system to have any mistakes, no matter how small. I pointed out the mistake to my friend and was sure that now we would reposition the battery correctly. But Sashka replied that it was planned that way!
I've never heard of such tricks
It turns out that experienced craftsmen always lift up the radiator from the side where they install the air vent. Thanks to this, air bubbles that form from time to time in the batteries rise to the top, from where they can be easily released.
But there are nuances
Sashka said that radiators are not always installed at an angle. It all depends on which air vents are used in the system: automatic or manual.
For automatic air vents, no special tricks are needed; the air is released as normal.
But with mechanical models, difficulties arise.
To remove the air lock, the owner of the apartment must bleed near the water so that the air bubbles are carried out into the Mayevsky tap.
This problem is solved by a slight tilt of the battery - only 2-3O. If the radiator is tilted away from the Mayevsky tap, the air will begin to rise to the top. Have you ever uncorked champagne? The bottle is always tilted so that the bubbling foam flows not onto the opener’s hands, but to the side. It's the same story with the radiator.
The system works very simply
Air passes through the battery and accumulates at the air vent. All that is required from the owner is to take a screwdriver and carefully open the Mayevsky tap so that the plug goes away. This will release a few drops of water, which can be wiped off with a cloth.
For houses with parquet and expensive laminate flooring, this is a very important point. Damaging the coating with hot water takes just a few minutes. And install the battery correctly - and that’s it, no risks!
An additional advantage of this installation: air is collected only in the air vent. This is the highest point in the system, the traffic jam has nowhere to go further. This means you won’t air out the system somewhere “upstream” and won’t be chasing a plug from radiator to radiator.
This trick works with metal batteries, cast iron, and aluminum. Neither the design, nor the shape, nor the number of radiators in the system matters.
Sashka said that several years ago he did heating in a huge three-story house. Kilometers of pipes, dozens of batteries - such complex systems always cause a lot of problems.But a lot of time has passed, and the owners are still happy with the result. The huge system works like a Swiss watch!
At first I was skeptical about Alexander's story. But my parents’ problems with the over-inflated system really got to me—and I decided to take a risk.
And yesterday we tested the heating. If you've tried starting a system from scratch, you know how difficult it is to get the air out of it. You wander from one radiator to another and drain, drain, drain... But no such problems arose with my system. We simply poured water, waited a little and bleed the plugs through the air vents.
I was very pleased.
Now I recommend this method to you too.
It’s a pity that I didn’t know about it before - I would have installed such a system for my parents so that they wouldn’t have to bother with air locks.