On an old New York apartment radiator, with two valves, what do I do to only have a little heat?

Question

So, I'm not going to be home for awhile. If I leave my radiator off, the temperature in my room will probably drop below freezing, and my plants will die. If I leave my radiator all the way on, I'll cook everything. How do I set the radiator to a happy medium? I've tried only opening both valves a little bit, but this made more noise than I'm prepared to deal with. I tried just opening one all the way, and only opening the other a little. I tried the reverse, too. I have no idea what I'm doing. And I can't tell which valve the steam is coming in from and which one it's going out through. Provided it's even steam! Help me.

Answer 1

First, you need to figure out whether you're dealing with a hot water radiator or a steam radiator.

If it's hot water, then you've got a chance. If it's steam, I'm afraid you're probably stuck with the all-the-way-on or all-the-way-off solution.

The short answer is that with hot water, you can adjust the two valves, as you have been doing, until you get the water flow you want. I'm sure that, to do the job correctly you should determine which way the water is flowing and adjust them in some sort of order. But I'm also pretty sure that just monkeying with the two of them until you get something less than full flow should work too.

I'm going through this right now at my house. I've got steam radiators, though, so I'm kind of out of luck.

With steam radiators, you really need the valves to be fully open or fully closed. Otherwise, you're going to have steam bubbling up through water in your radiator, creating a lot of noise and possibly damaging the radiator.

What I did was find a big, old insulating comforter and made a giant sock for my radiator. I left a little slit at one side, so that the air valve that sticks out of the side was outside the sock. By covering up the radiator, I effectively limited the amount of heat that escaped from the radiator. Since steam is not hot enough to start a fire, I'm not too concerned about that - even though the inside of the blanket got too hot to touch.

I can't say that it worked perfectly. I still got a lot more heat out of the radiator than I wanted. But it definitely cut down on the temperature somewhat.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

Answer 2

I would suggest that you get some foil covered foam insulating board and make a box to go around the radiator. That will help contain the heat without messing with the valves. A 4' x 8' sheet that you can cut with a knife would cost less than $20. In New York you should be able to buy at Home Depot.

Answer 3

steam comes in through larger pipe at bottom of radiator."leave this valve opened all the way,closing even alittle will cool down steam and turn into water. use only top valve regulatortotadjust temp. the banging you hear is the hot steam hitting the colder water left in radiator,that's why you leave bottom valve opened always,stay warm....