Wanting to fit a designer radiator AND a heated towel rail in a bathroom that currently has a 600 x 600 radiator. The house is piped in microbore. Any traps and tricks for teeing an additional radiator? I guess balancing will be critical - but why any worse than with the existing system?
Microbore
Jun 05, 2019
Last reply: 7 years ago
13 Replies
There is a maximum heat load you can put on a pipe which is dependent on its diameter
You have not said what diameter the microbore is but putting two rads in parallel on microbore might be too much.
M Normally with microbore pipes, they feed back to a manifold whereupon it is connected to 22mm pipes. So you do not generally see tees on microbore piping
it's not 2 rads, one is a towel rail which consumes very little. Not a problem.
NT
If the towel rail is anything like mine (I have 5) you will find that you will have to have the lockshield valve almost fully closed (mine ended up at quarter turn as it's essentially a load of 15mm pipes in parallel on a 22mm double manifold. normal rads have much thinner channels and higher resistance to the flow of water and on mine the lockshield us at anywhere between 3/4 to 1 1/2 turn depending on distance from boiler and size of radiator.
Your biggest problem is going to be finding microbore equal tees. I've never seen any. You might have to get creative and use a reducer the wrong way into a 15mm equal tee and then use two more reducers to the rads.
This will involve a blowtorch as they all tend to be solder fittings rather than compression fittings.
There is an easier alternative: since the towel rail dissipates far less heat than the rad & offers minimal resistance to flow, plumb the 2 in series.
NT
They're widely available. For instance:
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SteveW
snipped-for-privacy@tesco.net wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:
8mm. The manifold has every outlet occupied and is not easy to access.
That would mean: rail will be off in summer when generally not needed rail doesn't run at max primary temp, which is generally good no added controls needed for the rail
NT
Ah, 8mm, I had assumed 10mm. But my previous post still stands, as Screwfix have those as well:
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SteveW
It might be plastic pipe - he didn't say it was copper!
Unless you *want* the rail on in summer - in which case it could be connected to the HW rather than CH circuit, assuming it's a stored hot water system heated by the boiler.
hey all tend to be solder fittings
It is copper!
snipped-for-privacy@tesco.net wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:
My manifold is full.
Steve Walker snipped-for-privacy@walker-family.me.uk> wrote in news:qdauns$a05$1@dont- email.me:
Many thanks
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