About the service
I replace and flush water radiators in flats, and I always start with arithmetic instead of a trip to the shop. The section count follows the room, not the wish: floor area and ceiling height first, then the number of outside walls and the width of the glazing. A corner room with a wide window asks for two or three sections above the catalogue figure, while an inner room squeezed between warm neighbours does fine with fewer. I also look at the system itself, because a vertical single-pipe riser and a two-pipe horizontal layout need different pipework, different diameters and give very different room for control.
Then I tell you honestly whether replacement is needed at all. A hot top and cold bottom sections almost always mean sludge and scale inside the body: I take the radiator off the wall, flush it under pressure, add chemistry when the deposits are old, and hang it back. The opposite picture, a warm bottom and a cold top, is trapped air, and it is cured with a bleed valve and a correct fall on the connecting pipes. Pinholes at the nipples, aluminium swollen from inside, weeping joints and a cracked cast-iron header are not flushing jobs, and I say so rather than sell you a rinse.
The riser is shut off by the building management company, never by me and never by the client, and during the heating season the whole job has to be agreed with them in advance, down to the exact time window. That is why summer and the shoulder seasons are the best moment to do this work, with the system drained and nobody waiting for the heat to come back. In a single-pipe system I always keep the bypass: without it a removed radiator stops the heat for every flat on the riser, and a thermostatic head must never be fitted without one, because it would throttle the whole riser instead of your room. I fit shut-off valves on both connections and an air vent, so the next repair needs no building-wide shut-off, and after assembly I pressure-test the loop and hold it while I check every joint under load. The old batteries leave with me the same day.
What the job includes: sizing by room and window; agreeing the shut-off with the management company; dismantling and taking out the old units; flushing or replacement; connections, bypass, shut-off valves and air vent; fitting and setting thermostatic heads; balancing the loop; pressure test with a witnessed result; clean-up and disposal of the old radiators.
Then I tell you honestly whether replacement is needed at all. A hot top and cold bottom sections almost always mean sludge and scale inside the body: I take the radiator off the wall, flush it under pressure, add chemistry when the deposits are old, and hang it back. The opposite picture, a warm bottom and a cold top, is trapped air, and it is cured with a bleed valve and a correct fall on the connecting pipes. Pinholes at the nipples, aluminium swollen from inside, weeping joints and a cracked cast-iron header are not flushing jobs, and I say so rather than sell you a rinse.
The riser is shut off by the building management company, never by me and never by the client, and during the heating season the whole job has to be agreed with them in advance, down to the exact time window. That is why summer and the shoulder seasons are the best moment to do this work, with the system drained and nobody waiting for the heat to come back. In a single-pipe system I always keep the bypass: without it a removed radiator stops the heat for every flat on the riser, and a thermostatic head must never be fitted without one, because it would throttle the whole riser instead of your room. I fit shut-off valves on both connections and an air vent, so the next repair needs no building-wide shut-off, and after assembly I pressure-test the loop and hold it while I check every joint under load. The old batteries leave with me the same day.
What the job includes: sizing by room and window; agreeing the shut-off with the management company; dismantling and taking out the old units; flushing or replacement; connections, bypass, shut-off valves and air vent; fitting and setting thermostatic heads; balancing the loop; pressure test with a witnessed result; clean-up and disposal of the old radiators.
