Heating balance

Radiators are balanced if they all have the same temperature drop between the pipe going in (the flow) and the pipe coming out (the return). If the radiators are all sized well for the rooms, a balanced system will distribute the heating evenly. In an unbalanced system, some rooms will heat up too slowly and stay cold unless the boiler is kept on for more time. In many houses and community venues, users resort to turning up a room thermostat to make this happen, wasting energy as a result.

It’s very common for venues with radiators to have them go out of balance because workers don’t re-balance the system after carrying out works. Balancing is time-consuming. If the radiators all feel different temperatures when the building is running and all the thermostats are calling for more heat, then suspect a balance problem.

We don’t supply enough thermal monitors for most groups to look at this, but if we did the air temperature might look something like this.

The rooms all cool at around the same rate, so they probably are similar for heat loss, but they warm up at different rates - some curves are steeper than others. It’s possible that the room with the red line just has a more generously sized radiator, but if you see this, you should suspect that the balance is off.