What is the best way to cover the radiator if the house is too hot?

Widely used in standard apartments, cast iron radiators are the best way to heat residential premises. However, such heating devices also have their drawbacks, mainly associated with the lack of a thermostat and an excessively high output of accumulated energy. You can consider ways to optimize the operation of cast iron radiators, if any are present in your apartment.

The simplest and most effective material for eliminating excessive heat transfer from a cast iron battery is a regular blanket placed on the planes of the radiator. Closing the battery with it will be a matter of seconds for you. The possible predicted skepticism of many Internet users is associated, first of all, with poor knowledge of the physical processes described in the school curriculum.

Reduced indoor humidity will be a minor side effect. It can be easily eliminated by purchasing an air humidifier (its average consumption in a typical apartment is up to three liters of water per day) and a psychrometer - a device that controls the level of humidity in the room.

Do not use the windows as a way to lower the room temperature; they can only be opened for natural ventilation of the room. Otherwise, the presence of very dry air in the apartment can lead to unpleasant consequences for the nasopharynx and skin. The heat escaping from the room will not significantly reduce the heating temperature.

The rationale for such advice lies in the physical processes that occur when cold street air enters the apartment. This air, which has a low level of humidity, heats up as it passes through the window into the room and reduces the absolute value of humidity. Accordingly, an increase in the humidity of the apartment atmosphere will occur with the help of your breath and skin, taking away the water it needs from the body.

The simple way

The easiest way to cope with elevated room temperatures is for those who have a radiator system with regulated hot water supply installed in their apartment. It is enough to simply cover or completely shut off the water supply to the radiator, and the thermometer in your apartment will creep down before your eyes.

The balancing valve can also be installed on the heating riser. As a result of its complete or partial blocking, the temperature in the home will decrease. Having found the best option, you can easily bring your home climate to the required standard.

This will, of course, solve the problem of high temperature in your apartment. However, this is only suppressing symptoms when you can pay attention to the cause of the problem. There is another unpleasant aspect of overheating - every extra degree by which our radiators heat up is money that we overpay for heating.

We complain to all authorities

In order to avoid paying extra money for heating, it is necessary to draw the attention of utility companies to the problem of too hot radiators in the apartments of your building.

First, you should try to influence the situation through your management company. Formally, the residents of the building are not directly connected with the employees of the city heating network, therefore, it is not the apartment owners who should communicate with them, but the management of the management company, which is responsible for a particular building.

If a complaint is written to the management company, but it does not bring any results, you can contact higher authorities, which are the housing inspectorate and Rospotrebnadzor. It is important to draw the attention of officials to the fact that it is hot in the house, and contacting the management company did not lead to any results. It is not a fact that even such measures will be able to quickly solve the problem. Rather, it will have to be resolved due to natural conditions or a planned decrease in temperature in the network. But by doing this, you will show the management company that you do not intend to put up with their dishonest work, guaranteeing careful consideration of your future requests.

There is one nuance in this solution to the problem. It is important that you are not the only one who contacts the management company, and later higher authorities. You need to make sure that the other residents of your home also face the problem of overheating. After all, there are often cases when apartments on the first floors of a house are too hot, and residents of the upper floors complain about the cold, which forces utility workers to work harder. This is how it turns out.

In this case, simply adjusting the heating intensity will not solve the problem - the management company will be forced to carry out work to balance the heating system in the house so that the temperature in the apartments on the upper floors is the same as on the first floors of the house.

Ways to disguise radiators

If the temperature in the apartment is completely satisfactory, but you are only concerned about the appearance of the batteries, then you can use one of the decorating methods. The main thing is not to harm the heat transfer process and observe several important points:

The radiator may require repair or replacement, so you need to think through the decorative design so that in the event of an accident the battery can be easily removed. Plumbers who regularly encounter problems with heating devices generally recommend using only attached screens that simply slide to the side.
The main threat from a radiator is a possible leak at the junction with the heating pipes. Therefore, the second important nuance is the accessibility of the connection points, which can be ensured by providing a plastic door in the box design .

Using wallpaper

Typical heating radiators are painted white and look good only against white walls.
If the walls are dark in color but without a pattern, the radiators can simply be repainted. Only heat-resistant paint can be used. Drawings on the walls complicate the task . Using a stencil and paint, it’s easy to duplicate a simple pattern on a battery. If the pattern is complex, you can cut pieces from the leftover wallpaper that match the size of the sections and stick them on the radiator.

A special way to decorate a battery is decoupage. Craft supply stores sell vinyl-based stickers that do not deform when exposed to temperature. For decoupage, you can use not only ready-made patterns, but also create your own from scrap materials: fabric, paper, hot melt glue and even beads.

Fabric screen

Women with good sewing skills often make their own fabric radiator covers.
An alternative way to decorate is to create a special curtain for the battery. They are made of loose fabric and attached to the wall or window sill using textile Velcro. Most often, a fabric screen is made from the same material as curtains.

An undoubted advantage of such screens: minimal impact on heat transfer and basic care - the battery curtain, which has collected all the dust, can be effortlessly cleaned when washed in a regular washing machine.

Mounted and attached structures

For lovers of ready-made solutions, construction and furniture stores offer screens made of various materials. The variety of choices allows you to choose a design that will fit perfectly into any interior. The most popular screens are made of metal and wood:

Metal decorative screens are made from stainless steel. Chrome structures fit well into a stylish high-tech interior. The main advantage of metal decor is high thermal conductivity, easy maintenance and wear resistance.
Wooden screens are suitable for interiors in American or Scandinavian style. Most often, wooden screens are made in the form of a large-mesh lattice, which does not interfere with the normal convection of the battery.
The decorative glass screen looks very elegant, and the design itself takes on an airy lightness. But decorating with solid glass reduces heat transfer by almost half; a more effective way is to use a screen made of several glass panels.
Drywall screens are also very common because you can make them yourself. It must be remembered that the thermal conductivity of drywall is very low, and the material itself begins to deteriorate under the influence of high temperatures. Therefore, it is better to choose fire-resistant drywall and treat the sheets with a primer or PVA glue.

Masking boxes

A more complex decor option is a box that covers the radiator on all sides.

Most often, boxes are made from the following materials:

Heat-resistant drywall is an inexpensive material that at the final stage is painted, covered with wallpaper or film, decorated with decorative elements and even stucco.
MDF panels are also inexpensive and successfully imitate rare wood species. The panels are selected to match the color of the main furniture.
Plywood, like drywall, is very often used when making boxes yourself, and at the final stage it is decorated with various materials.
Wood is used as a material for the box due to its high environmental friendliness, but it is more expensive and difficult to process.
Plastic, although it is used as part of the box structure, is not particularly popular. When heated, plastic elements can release toxic fumes.

Heat Shield Materials

Foil foam is usually found in retail sales as short rolls. The thickness of the material layer in this case is up to 3 millimeters, and for foamed polyethylene – up to 4 millimeters. The thermal insulation properties of these materials are comparable to the properties of a 100 mm layer of mineral wool insulation.

When placing a screen that reflects heat, one can and should take into account such an important factor as the minimum distance between the edge of the radiator section of the battery and the inner wall, which is 4 mm. If you change this distance downward, it will complicate or disrupt the circulation of warm air and, as a result, convective heat transfer and the efficiency of the radiator.

Special cases of placing a heating battery on the wall do not allow the installation of a full-fledged screen that reflects heat. The way out of this situation is to mount aluminum foil on the wall, its shiny surface copes well with heat reflection. One sheet of such material, placed on a standard brick wall (if its thickness is 51 centimeters), will reduce the heat transfer loss of the battery by up to 35 percent.

The various methods discussed above for eliminating excess thermal energy from a battery can be taken into account as effective methods that have been proven in practice. If it gets too hot in the apartment, use what is said to make your home as comfortable as possible.

What to do if your apartment is hot in winter

In winter, some houses have very hot radiators. The air conditioner is powerless in winter - the external unit must operate at positive temperatures. But it can help in early spring, when it’s already around zero outside and the radiators are still hot.

The most effective way to deal with excessively hot batteries is to install thermostats or ordinary shut-off valves on them. With their help you can regulate the water supply. As a last resort, just block it.

If this is not possible, you can open the windows. But in winter this is fraught with the danger of catching a cold. If you open the windows for a short time, then after a while the air in the room will warm up again and the heat will return.

Heating radiators can be covered with damp towels or sheets. This will humidify the air and reduce the temperature of the batteries. There is only one drawback - the sheets dry out quickly and need to be constantly moistened.

Another option is to cover the battery with a thick blanket. It will serve as a heat insulator and help reduce the temperature. And next to the battery you can place a jar of water, which will evaporate and reduce the dryness of the air.

The management company is responsible for regulating the temperature of the water supplied to your home. You can contact it with a request to reduce the temperature of the coolant. If your request is ignored, you can file a written complaint with Rospotrebnadzor.

Adjusting heating flow or return

In some cases, hydraulic balancing—adjustment of flow and return—will help to effectively redistribute heat throughout the heating system. In this case, the coolant is directed from places of its excess to areas experiencing a deficiency.

What to do with a stuck ball valve

When ball valves are not used for their intended purpose for a long time, they begin to jam due to the formation of scale. Do not use brute force to try to open the valve using a gas wrench or pliers. When the faucet handle does not unscrew immediately, then:

You need to unscrew the fixing nut and remove the “butterfly” from the rod.
Under the “butterfly” there is a nut that secures the plastic seal, which needs to be loosened. A key is used and the tap is turned half a turn.
It is also possible to use a tool that allows you to firmly grasp the stem. It is possible to use an adjustable wrench. The rod turns without excessive effort.
If resistance is felt, you need to move in the opposite direction, gradually increasing the amplitude by 5 degrees.
It is necessary to develop the rotation of the rod until a right angle is formed. If this result is achieved, the gland nut is returned and the butterfly handle is installed.

Important! When you have WD-40 lubricant in the house, apply it to the soured rod and leave for 10 minutes. This makes it easier to unscrew.

Of course, an electric sheet is the result of technological progress, but hot water in a rubber heating pad or a simple plastic bottle was, is and will be one of the simplest and most effective means for heating a bed or body. It’s not for nothing that servants put copper hot water bottles in their masters’ beds several centuries ago. And now the rules of the game have not changed: put a heating pad in your bed before going to bed - and enjoy the warmth.

It is worth noting that there are special heating pads on sale that can be placed in the microwave. Heat it for one minute and you are ready to use. In addition, there is a salt heating pad: it heats up due to the crystallization of salt. The temperature of such a heating pad reaches 52 degrees Celsius.

Manual valves

Manually adjustable valves allow you to change the volume of coolant entering the radiator by increasing or decreasing the diameter of the passage hole.

The valve includes a valve with a shut-off head. It, in turn, is connected to a handle, on which a scale with divisions can be applied. Turning the handle causes the shut-off head to move and the volume of incoming coolant to change to a smaller or larger direction. The marks on the scale allow you to set the required battery temperature.

Manual valves are simple, reliable and inexpensive, but require regular monitoring.

Bed

The optimal temperature for sleeping is 16 degrees, at which people feel rested and healthy. In addition, the room must have humidified air. Placing the bed next to heating appliances makes it difficult for people to get quality sleep.

The air around the batteries is very hot and dry. If you inhale it all night, in the morning a person wakes up lethargic, tired and as if sick. Doctors say that sleeping in such conditions provokes frequent relapses of colds and other diseases. Due to dry air, breathing difficulties and peeling of the skin occur.

The best way to paint hot batteries

Exposure to hot water causes premature failure of heating radiators - over time, pockets of corrosion are found on the metal surface. To prevent this process, special types of paint should be used to paint batteries.

A high-quality paint composition must withstand elevated temperatures well, have a stable film structure and maintain its original tone for a long time. In addition, if the owner prefers to carry out repairs in winter, it is advisable to choose paint without a strong odor .

To paint heating radiators during the heating season, it is recommended to use the following types of paint:

Alkyd. This material does not have a strong odor, retains its original shade for a long time and is excellent for interior metal work;
Acrylic. Paints based on this base have excellent resistance to elevated temperatures and are ideal for application to household heating radiators. Acrylic compositions retain color for a long time, but have an unpleasant odor, so the use of these paints for interior work is limited. There is a variety of acrylic paints that need to be mixed with special solvents; they are distinguished by higher covering qualities and an impeccable glossy film, and to apply this paint no preliminary primer of the surface is required;
Oily. Durable and reliable paints, but they have a significant drawback - the drying time is too long.

In addition to the paints listed, aerosol cans with auto enamel can be used to paint radiators. The sprayer greatly facilitates the work and allows you to use material economically.

Tool preparation

Before replacing, you need to prepare a special tool:

Adjustable wrench,

adjustable wrench

"Bamka" key

"Bamka"

Electric drill,
Drill for working on concrete of the appropriate diameter,
Angle grinder (“grinder”) with a diamond disc for processing metal surfaces,

Bulgarian

Tape measure and folding meter,
Construction pencil, which will be used for marking,
Water level (“spirit level”).

Level

Important! If you are unable to reach an agreement with your neighbors above or below, you will need a tool, which is necessary for cutting threads. The external thread is cut on the pipe near the floor and under the ceiling.

The next stage is marking the position of the radiator on the wall and pre-assembling the components.

Battery shutdown

What to do when an accident occurs and the room is flooded with hot water, but there are no shut-off valves? Or are the connections to the battery not connected by a bypass? In an emergency situation, the temporary discomfort of the neighbors will have to be pushed into the background and the water in the battery must be shut off in any way.

After all, as a result of a breakthrough, significant material losses can be incurred not only by you, but also by your neighbors below, who will also be reached by the water.

Advice. If the leak is small, water just drips at the connection, then you have enough time to resolve the issue. You need to substitute some kind of container and contact the heating supply organization or a house mechanic by phone.

When the leak is significant and there is a risk of flooding in the room, you need to act quickly. The taps on the connections to the radiator must be closed, regardless of the absence of a bypass. If there are no fittings, then you need to make calls to all possible emergency services, and then try to shut off the entire riser yourself until they arrive. To do this, you will have to go down to the basement of the house and find the heating point of your entrance. In simple words, you need to find 2 vertical pipes going up from a horizontal collector of a larger diameter.

The valves or taps located at the insertion of both pipes into the manifold must be closed. In this case, not only your apartment will be left without heat, but also everyone else along the riser. In a good way, you need to go through all the apartments and warn your neighbors about the current situation, and hang a sign on the closed valves so that no one opens them again while you are undergoing repairs. If it was not possible to find the necessary valves, you will have to wait for the arrival of a locksmith or the arrival of the emergency service.

Conclusion. You can shut off your steel or cast iron battery in the middle of winter in two cases: when the piping scheme allows it and in the event of an emergency - in any case.

Control valves

Operating principle

A control valve for a heating radiator is a device that allows you to automatically control the movement of the coolant.

The design of such products is quite complex, but they also work much more efficiently than valves for manual adjustment:

The bellows, a container filled with liquid or gas, is responsible for sensing the outside temperature. As the temperature rises, the bellows expands, affecting the control unit.

Note! The price of liquid and gas-filled devices is approximately the same, but the operating features are different. Thus, gas models react faster to temperature changes, while liquid models more accurately convey the impact on the coolant flow

The expanded bellows presses on the valve stem, which lowers and gradually closes the valve saddle, through which hot water enters the battery.
When cooling, the opposite situation is observed: the rod rises and the lumen of the saddle expands.

We set the degree of initial compression of the bellows ourselves, either by setting the temperature value we need on the digital display, or by rotating the mechanical adjustment knob. It is also possible to connect the thermal valve with external sensors - in this case, the movement of the rod is controlled not by a bellows, but by a servo drive under the influence of an electrical or hydraulic system.

Installation of thermostatic tap

Among specialists, the question of whether it is necessary to install taps on heating radiators is practically not discussed. Even installing a simple ball valve provides a number of advantages, and the presence of a high-quality thermostat is even more so. However, the instructions advise following a number of rules when installing such devices:

Example of correct installation of the product

First, you need to select a suitable valve modification. For systems with one pipe we use products of type RTD-G, for two-pipe systems - RTD-N.
Secondly, before installing taps on heating radiators, we check the direction of movement of the coolant (indicated by an arrow on the body). If we mix it up, the device will work any way, just not the way we need it.
Thirdly, we place the thermoregulation head perpendicular to the plane of the battery. so that the heat flow does not affect its operation.

How to regulate heating radiators using taps is also a fairly simple question:

Having installed the valve on the radiator, we check the tightness and supply coolant to the system.
Using the handle or dial, set the average temperature.
After about an hour, we adjust the valve setting according to our feelings and checking the thermometer in the room.
If necessary, repeat the adjustment again. however, this is usually not required.

The system is adjusted by rotating the handle

After this, it is usually necessary to interfere with the operation of the device no more than once a month - in case of sudden changes in external temperature.

Top tips

Creating a cooling system

The first thing that comes to mind when fighting the heat is, of course, creating some kind of air conditioner from improvised materials with your own hands. As a rule, almost every apartment already has at least one fan, which, however, copes with the heat rather poorly - it simply drives warm air from place to place.

By the way, it is important to follow several important rules if you really want to ventilate the room and not let in the hot heat from the street : close the windows when the temperature outside rises above +25 °C. The lowest temperature is from 4:00 to 7:00 and in the evening after 20:00.

However, with a little imagination you can turn it into something worthwhile and useful for fighting the heat. Let's look at the most popular methods and choose the best one in terms of efficiency and ease of “creation” (you can put on a white robe for respectability, so that your family will immediately understand that you are an inventor, not a hack):

Place a bowl or better yet a pan filled with ice in front of the fan. You can even take 3-4 plastic bottles (they are more convenient to freeze), but then do not forget to place a tray or large plate under them, otherwise the melted water will drain from them onto the floor.

Efficiency: high. Of course, this will add humidity to the air, and as we know, dry heat, when air humidity is low, is more easily tolerated than heat with high humidity. However, too low humidity leads to dry skin, poor body heat transfer, and damage to the upper respiratory tract.

In this case, this is desperately reminiscent of air conditioners, especially the centralized type, which are not just equipped with an automatic air humidification system that allows you to maintain the humidity in the room in a comfortable zone.

Cons: As a rule, bottles heat up in about 30 minutes to almost room temperature.

Advice: to ensure that cold air is drawn in from the rear and no extraneous warm air is sucked in, glue a homemade cardboard casing around the circumference of the fan with double-sided tape.

Gauze is placed on the fan in 2-3 layers, about 5 meters long. The lower or upper (or both) ends of the gauze are lowered into a bowl of cold water. When the fan is running at max. speed, the air in a medium-sized room is cooled by 4-5 degrees.

Efficiency: average - it’s pleasant to be in such air, but the air throughout the apartment is only slightly cooled.

A super difficult option for craftsmen - advice: make your husband make such a gravitsapa . You will need a fan, 6 plastic bottles, a sheet of thick cardboard or thin plastic, plastic zip ties, a utility knife, and silicone hot melt adhesive.

Let's start getting creative! We cut off the bottom part of the bottles, focusing, for example, on the label - the cut line will run exactly along it. Cut carefully, the resulting parts should be the same in height!

Automatic adjustment

Automatic maintenance of room temperature is good because once you set the control knob to the desired position, you will get rid of the need to twist and change something for a long time. The temperature of the heating radiators is adjusted constantly and continuously. The disadvantage of such systems is their significant cost, and the more functionality, the more expensive the device will be. There are some other features and subtleties, but more on them below.

Adjusting radiators with thermostats

To maintain a constant set temperature in a room (room), thermostats or thermostats for heating radiators are used. Sometimes this device may be called a “thermostatic valve”, “thermostatic valve”, etc. There are many names, but one device is meant. To make it clearer, it is necessary to explain that the thermal valve and thermal valve are the lower part of the device, and the thermal head and thermoelement are the upper part. And the entire device is a radiator thermostat or thermostat.

This is what the thermostat on the radiator looks like

Most of these devices do not require any power source. The exception is models with a digital screen: batteries are inserted into the thermostatic head. But their replacement period is quite long, the current consumption is low.

Structurally, the radiator thermostat consists of two parts:

thermostatic valve (sometimes called “housing”, “thermal valve”, “thermal valve”);
thermostatic head (also called “thermostatic element”, “thermoelement”, “thermal head”).

The valve itself (body) is made of metal, usually brass or bronze. Its design is similar to that of a manual valve. Most companies make the lower part of the radiator thermostat unified. That is, heads of any type and any manufacturer can be installed on one body. Let us clarify: you can install a manual, mechanical, or automatic thermocouple on one thermal valve. It is very comfortable. If you want to change the adjustment method, you do not need to buy the entire device. They installed another thermostatic element and that was it.

The difference between a manual radiator regulator and an automatic one is only in the installed thermal head

In automatic regulators, the principle of influencing the shut-off valve is different. In a manual regulator, its position is changed by turning the handle; in automatic models there is usually a bellows that presses on the spring-loaded mechanism. In electronic devices, everything is controlled by the processor.

The bellows is the main part of the thermal head (thermoelement). It is a small sealed cylinder containing liquid or gas. Both liquid and gas have one thing in common: their volume is highly dependent on temperature. When heated, they significantly increase their volume, stretching the bellows cylinder. It puts pressure on the spring, blocking the flow of coolant more strongly. As it cools, the volume of gas/liquid decreases, the spring rises, the coolant flow increases, and heating occurs again. This mechanism, depending on the calibration, allows you to maintain the set temperature with an accuracy of 1oC.

Watch the video to see how the thermostat works.

The radiator thermostat can be:

with manual temperature control;
with automatic; with built-in temperature sensor;
with remote (wired).

Using Three-Way Valves

A three-way valve is rarely used to regulate battery temperature. He has a slightly different task. But in principle, it is possible.

By installing a three-way valve on the supply side, you can also regulate the coolant temperature

A three-way valve is installed at the junction of the bypass and the supply pipe going to the radiator. To stabilize the temperature of the coolant, it must be equipped with a thermostatic head (of the type described above). If the temperature near the head of the three-way valve rises above the set value, the flow of coolant to the radiator is blocked. It all rushes through the bypass. After cooling, the valve operates in the opposite direction and the radiator heats up again. This connection method is implemented for single-pipe systems, more often with vertical wiring.