replace radiator tails to bring a short distance out from wall?

[The Night Tripper]

Hi All I am looking at replacing one of our existing wall-mounted radiators for a newer one, for aesthetic reasons mainly. The replacement is likely to be the same size (HxW) as the current one, but 'single convector plus fins', instead of 'single convector, no fines' as per the original.

This will have the effect of the radiator tails needing to be farther out from the wall than currently, by some 15mm or so if memory serves.

The tails come from under the floorboards, and I am wondering about the best way to remake them. If it was only a matter of a couple of mm I'd have little compunction in trying to bend them to suit, but I don't think this will work for 15mm.

Am I going to have to desolder the tails and fit new ones? and if so, does the team advise that I try to leave the existing tees as they are, and put a small dogleg in the new tails; or try to desolder/rotate the existing tees round a bit, if you see what I mean... or some other solution?

Thanks for any thoughts. I have a reasonably decent blowtorch if that helps.

Cheers J^n

[Tricky Dicky]

You may well find there is enough slack in the pipe work below the floor ju st to widen the holes the pipes come up and move the pipes over to the requ ired position. Did that myself recently by drilling a 16mm hole carefully w here I wanted the pipe to be and simply using a Stanley knife to pare away any residual wood between the original hole and the new position until the pipe was able to move over. Of course you need to take care when drilling n ot to damage the pipe so an inspection beneath the floor boards is required .

Richard

[GMM]

Of course if you can find a way to wangle the connections as you imply, it will probably be the easiest way but, when I had some radiators replaced by a pro a little while ago, he brought the connections up behind the skirting and out through the plaster behind the radiators, using flexible plastic pipes. The plastic terminates in an 'inward-facing' chrome push fit elbow, so you have to look under the radiator to see the pipe.

I'd never seen it before but have followed the pattern on those I have subsequently replaced myself because a) it looks a good deal better, with clear floor/skirting beneath, and b) the radiators can be taken off the walls for decorating behind them.

This approach is much more feasible when doing a radical job on a room, of course, but it may be worth giving it some thought if, for example, you're thinking of a new carpet soon.

[John Rumm]

Two choices really... you might get away with just enlarging the hole in the floor the pipes come through to allow them to move to the new position. This can work well where there is a long ish pipe run and the pipes are not fixed too rigidly to other pipework.

If you don't want to (or can't) move the entry point, then a small offset bend is the other choice. Its the one I went for when redoing rads a little while back, and once they are painted up etc, you don't notice.

[harryagain]

If you have to make up a pipe with a "wiggle" to offset, consider installing the new radiator a little higher to give more space.

[RJH]

Could you tell me where you got the tube/elbows please? Thinking of doing the same.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Assuming they can't just be moved slightly, the easiest way would be to cut them below floor level and extend from that point to suit. The problem may be getting all the water out of them to allow soldering. If this isn't possible you could use a compression fitting to join the new to the old. I'd not try unsoldering the original Ts for that reason.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

A bit like this?

[Andrew Gabriel]

Mounting brackets can usually be fitted either way around to give two different mounting offsets from the wall. Using the closest might work if the previous rad was spaced further away.

I did this a year back for my brother. After disconnecting the old rad, there was lots of vertical play in the tails, and I just forced them to bend out a little to meet the new rad. There's a risk you'll break the pipe when forcing it, so you might then end up having to do a larger job.

[GMM]

I've used these ones from Sfx:

I wasn't sure about the push fit aspect but they seem to work fine and look good. So far I had one incidence of failing to tighten up sufficiently around the stem, as it takes a bit to 'bite' into chrome, but easily fixed the small weep with a spanner.

I suspect a real PM would be a better/cheaper source but I always seem to need these things at the weekend.

[RobertL]

or you can use 10mm flexible copper tube and bring it as a 'tail' out of the wall above the skirting and hidden behind the rad. then its easy to modify later if the rad-type is changed.

[GMM]

Well, a bit, except that link shows a nice tidy job that's on show. In my case, both pipes exit the wall side by side approximately in the middle of the radiator about 1/3 of the way up its height. That height gives plenty of room to secure them to the wall so they don't break out the plaster, if necessary. Guest make a plate for this, but I didn't use the one I bought, because I couldn't work out how to mount it. (Admittedly, most I have done so far have come through the wall from the other side or have come through plasterboard with a cavity behind.) Then they take an arc to each tail (more accurately a sigmoid), most of arc being behind the rad so the pipe just dips down below the level of the radiator bottom to meet the elbow fitting, which is angled backwards at about 45 degrees (ie pointing halfway between wall and the middle of the rad).

Unless you get down pretty much to floor level, you can't see the pipework, just the stems of the elbows coming out of the valves. Instead you can see a clear run of skirting and (unperforated) carpet, the radiator sort of 'floating' on its brackets, which I think looks much better than the traditional system.

The practical benefit is that you can easily take a rad off the wall without disconnecting, so it should be easy to re-decorate behind them. Not that I'm planning on doing that for a while!

My biggest gripe was finding that the chrome elbows never match the chrome on the lockshields and TRVs (the elbows are chrome and the others are often a bit bronze-tinged), but in reality you never look at them again once they're fitted.

[Michael Chare]

The offset bend could be made using 45 degree elbows. Soldering is possible so long as the pipe is completely clear of water.