The radiator in the back bedroom was getting hot at the bottom and staying cold at the top.
Not slow to warm up. Not slightly uneven. Just stuck like that every time the heating came on.
Everything else in the house would already be warm.
This one lagged behind, like it wasn’t properly connected to the rest of it.
I only really noticed because I was upstairs when the heating kicked in and the contrast was obvious. Bathroom warm. Landing warm. Back bedroom… not quite.
I put my hand on the pipe going into the radiator. Properly hot.
The pipe coming out barely felt like it belonged to the same system.
I left my hand there for a bit longer than needed, just to be sure I wasn’t imagining it.
Still the same.
The valve looked open. That was the odd part. Nothing about it suggested it was the problem.
No stiffness. No noise. No sign anyone had messed with it.
I turned it anyway.
It moved.
Not a lot. Maybe two turns. No resistance, just more travel than it should have had left.
One of those movements where you stop and think, that probably wasn’t right.
I left it where it landed and stepped back.
The radiator didn’t suddenly change. It wasn’t that kind of fix.
But after a minute or two you could feel it happening. The heat creeping higher instead of stalling halfway up the panel.
Slow at first, then more even.
I stood there longer than I needed to, hand moving from bottom to middle to top like I was checking something complicated.
There was a faint clicking noise from the metal as it warmed through properly. I don’t remember hearing that before.
No air release. No gurgling. Just heat moving through it the way it probably should have been all along.
We’d already been around the house picking off small things after the blower door test showed how much was slipping out in places we hadn’t noticed
https://www.renewable-house.co.uk/our-first-blower-door-test-ugly-numbers-simple-wins/
That was mostly draughts and gaps.
This was different. Not a leak. Just something not fully doing its job.
Later that evening the room didn’t stand out anymore. Same temperature as everything else, which is all it ever needed to be.
I went back in the next morning and checked it again.
Still even.
I turned the valve very slightly back and forward just to see if there was any slack in it, then left it open again.
It didn’t really need that.
But it felt like the sort of thing worth checking once you’ve noticed it.
