Do you think it will fit?

[diy-newby]

Replacing (hopefully) a normal 440mm wide bathroom radiator with a towel radiator. Current pipe centres are 515mm. Nearest towel radiator I can find to fit is a 550mm one with 500mm pipe centres. Current pipes come out through the wall to connect to the rad. What do you think my chances are of there being enough play in the pipework behind the plasterboard to accommodate the 500mm centres? I was thinking of drilling alongside the pipe through the bathroom tiles and elongating the entry holes to try and pull in the pipes to 500mm centres.

.

[mark.hannah]

What type of pipe is it?

Mark.

[diy-newby]

10mm copper

[Newshound]

Unanswerable question. There is IMHO a very good chance that there will be enough slack but it is just possible that each pipe comes through a clearance hole in a stud. One or both may be immediately adjacent to a stud in the wrong direction. Drilling / nibbling / grinding the tiles away sounds a PITA and maybe risky to the hidden / adjacent pipework. Think about making up a spacer / adaptor.

[Roger Mills]

Haven't you got to adapt the pipework anyway? Presumably the radiator is side entry? Is the towel rad bottom entry? Maybe its just a case of replacing angled valves with straight ones. Unless you're unlucky, you should be able to accommodate a difference of 15mm - that's less than 5/16" per side in real money.

But do you really want to do it, anyway? It may *look* pretty, but that's not a lot of use when you're freezing to death! What's the rated heat output of the towel rad compared with that of the existing rad?

[diy-newby]

Thanks guys. I know there is no real answer to my question, without actually trying it. Just wondered if any plumbers lurking on here new what "normally" happens to the pipework behind the wall. Do they "usually" allow for some play or are they fixed in position, never to move again.

Yes, current radiator is side entry, towel rad is bottom entry. Is 15mm less than 5/16", given 25.4mm to an inch and all that, guessing more like

10/16"

Not sure about the heat output for both current rad and towel rad, to be honest, I haven't looked into that!

[Roger Mills]

Yes, 15mm is about 5/8" (or 10/16") but what I actually wrote was 5/16" per

*side* on the assumption that you would move each of the two pipes by that amount.

Well, I seriously suggest that you *do* look into that. Size for size, towel rads have nothing like the output of ordinary rads because of their vastly reduced surface area. Cover them with towels, and they're even worse!

[sm_jamieson]

I was thinking of a towel rad. The bloke in the bathroom shop said he wouldn't consider one of those as the only source of heat in a bathroom. Or the old victorian style ones. The new finned rads are so much more efficient. If there is already a source of heating then of course a towel rad is a good thing. I put a "designer" towel rail over the radiator to hang towels on. Simon.