Looking for advice/recommendations on which type of instrument to do a more scientific balancing. Total of 17 radiators. Upstairs standard 13mm bore downstairs 8mm microbore apart form conservatory which is standard
13 mm splitting into 10mm to serve 2 radiators. Choice seems to be between thermocouple or infrared. If the former how would you quickly attach and detach the leads to/from from the pipes? TIA
I would have thought air temperature was more to the point. Checking the temp of the rads doesn't take into account the volume and movement of the air.
Bill
I shall be having a go at mine when I have built another temperature logger (my first prototype has gone off to check the beer coolers in a bar). My plan was to trap sensors over the inlet and outlet 15mm copper pipes using a few inches of standard "split" insulation. That will make sure the pipe outer surface temperature gets pretty close to the water temperature.
I went with IR, but placed a masking tape "target" on each end to measure from - that saves the problem of getting odd readings on an IR thermometer from the metal due to its unexpected emissivity.
Make sure you check the sensors against each other, I've found they can vary by a few degrees, both in static readings and dynamic (ie response time variations).
+1 put some black tape on copper pipe, near rad valve, rather than on rad itself, seemed to work better.
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