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I hear a noise in all of my radiators. The higher the TRV setting the louder the noise gets. If I turn the TRV down to a low setting the noise goes away, presumably because the radiator is no longer heating up.

The noise sounds like air moving around the system, although it's very loud. It sounds like an airpline moving along the run with the jets blowing.

This sound has been happening for a while. I've bled all of the radiators, the pressure in the boiler is about 1.7 bar, I've tried different pump settings low, medium, and high but the sound remains.

The boiler is a Worcester Bosch Greenstar 30i ERP Condensing Combi Boiler and it is installed in the loft.

Any ideas what this problem could be?
 
Thanks.

I've let some pressure out and it's now at 1.5 bar. I think the noise is less although it's still noticeable and I'm not 100% sure.

Do you think it is safe to let more pressure out? Maybe down to 1.3?
 
Check and note the CH (boiler) temperature setting and reduce it to say 55/60C to see if noise reduces.

Yes, this is the problem. I put the boiler all the way down to 40C and after about 10 minutes all radiators went deadly silent. However, as you probably know they were only luke warm.

As soon as I went back into the loft and turned the boiler back up to 55, the boiler made a few clicking noises and started whirring. I went down to the radiators and they were all also making the whirring noise.

So it seems that the whirring noise is possibly the noise being made by the boiler that can be heard all around the system.

My boiler is a couple of years old and still under warranty so I could call Worcester. My plumber did make a comment a while ago that the fan was a bit noisy. Could this be the fan?
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A little bit more infrormation:

I started to observe the boiler and I watched the temperature on the LCD. The temperature steadily drops to 45C and then the boilers whirs into action for a few seconds and the heat jumps to 75C and then starts to drop again. I assume this is normal boiler behaviour.

However, the noise in the radiators is still present even when the boiler is not making a noise and the temperature is gradually decreasing.
 
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Does the sound change / disappear as soon as you adjust a TRV? If so, it may be the TRVs themselves. I've had some cheap ones do this, despite their being marked as bidirectional. Only solution was to change to TRV4's.
 
Does the sound change / disappear as soon as you adjust a TRV? If so, it may be the TRVs themselves. I've had some cheap ones do this, despite their being marked as bidirectional. Only solution was to change to TRV4's.

The sound goes away when the TRV is turned down (presumably because the valve is closed and no water is entering the radiators)?

I recently had 2 of the radiators replaced with Stelrads, and Drayton TR4 TRVs. As before, the radiator in the same location is the noisiest. Used to have some cheap radiators with Inta TRVs but the result seems to be the same in any case.

I tried removing the TRV 4 head, but that had no impact on the noise.
 
Yes, this is the problem. I put the boiler all the way down to 40C and after about 10 minutes all radiators went deadly silent. However, as you probably know they were only luke warm.

As soon as I went back into the loft and turned the boiler back up to 55, the boiler made a few clicking noises and started whirring. I went down to the radiators and they were all also making the whirring noise.

So it seems that the whirring noise is possibly the noise being made by the boiler that can be heard all around the system.

My boiler is a couple of years old and still under warranty so I could call Worcester. My plumber did make a comment a while ago that the fan was a bit noisy. Could this be the fan?
[automerge]1603131141[/automerge]
A little bit more infrormation:

I started to observe the boiler and I watched the temperature on the LCD. The temperature steadily drops to 45C and then the boilers whirs into action for a few seconds and the heat jumps to 75C and then starts to drop again. I assume this is normal boiler behaviour.

However, the noise in the radiators is still present even when the boiler is not making a noise and the temperature is gradually decreasing.

The boiler should run continuously at any set point as long as its minimum output is greater than the heat demand.
Can you open all TRVs fully and (any) roomstat(s) fully and set the boiler to 60C, the boiler should then definitely run continuously at a steady 60C and monitor the noise, then slowly start increasing the set point to say 70C, if no noise start slowly reducing the TRVs settings slowly and see what happens.
 
Thank you. Here's what I did:

- Cranked all the TRVs upto maximum (either 5 or 6 depending on TRV manufacturer)

- Set the thermostat to 20 to ensure it stayed on for a while

Here's what I observed:

- All of the radiators were quiet

- The noisy one downstairs (probably furthest from boiler) was much quieter but when I put my ear to the radiator I could hear the noise a little bit (I could live with this)

- The boiler was still cycling. The blue light is always on but the temperature drops to about 50C, the boiler makes a noise for a few seconds, and then the temperature gradually falls back down to about 50 over the course of ~5 minutes.

** UPDATE **

I think we might have solved it. For now, the boiler has stopped cycling and the noise has completely gone in all radiators.

Heres what I did:

  • Set the boiler temp back to 70C
  • Set the maximum output from the default 30 down to 21

Here's what happened:

  • The temperature slowly (extremely slowly) climbed from 48C to 70C.
  • The temperature then stabilised sometimes going up to 71C, then dropping down to 69C and back to 70C.
  • Now it stays within the range of 69 - 71 which seems healthy/normal.
  • I went to listen to all of the radiators and they all sound deadly silent

I next looked at the boiler settings. And the maximum power was 30 for CH and DHW. So I turned it down to 21 and I put the heat back to 70C.

This all seems to fit a pattern:

- the gas engineer also left the default settings for the pump at 4 (constant/high) which was making my pipes bang like crazy. When I turned it down to 2, that problem went away and the radiators still heated up nicely.

- I think the engineer hasn't set the boiler and heating system up properly

- He installed a Greenstar 30i (30kw) in my house with only 7 radiators (and only 2 are at full)

What next?:

- I'll keep monitoring the situation. It's only been 5 minutes so far, so I don't want to get too carried away (well I already have)

** UPDATE 2 **

Spoke too soon. The problem came back. Radiator downstair noisy and boiler temperature fluctuating again from 60 - 75.

** UPDATE 3 **

  • I've turned 3 of the TRVs to the maximum (altogether 5 at maximum and 2 at half).
  • The boiler temperature has now stabilised at a constant 70C.
  • The noise has reduced a little, but I can still hear it when I'm next to the noisy radiator and when I put my ear next to 2 others

Now I'll see what happens when I turn down the TRVs one-by-one.
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* UPDATE *

I give up.

I've had to increase the TRVs to 4 in all of my rooms to minimise the noise in the hallway. But now I have to choose between hot bedrooms or a cold hallway.

I can leave the windows open a little bit in the hot bedrooms during the day which has some advantages anyway.

I think the problem might be that the hallway is cold because there is no radiator in the kitchen where the thermostat lives. So the hallway radiator is trying to heat the hallway and the kitchen. It needs to do more work and be on longer than all the other radiators.

Any suggestions for a small heating solution in my kitchen? A radiator is not possible.
 
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Its hard to see why the boiler cycles with all trvs open fully, the minimum output of a 30 kw boiler shouldn't IMO be more than 5 or 6 kw and with 7 rads fully open then the heat demand should be a fair bit higher than this. Range rating the max output to 21kw is a good idea but this has no effect on the minimum output, I don't think you can range rate the minimum output downwards beyond a set minimum, if at all, you could just check that out in case it has been set higher than its minimum.
In case of any fault with the TRVs, I would suggest removing all the heads then with boiler firing steadily replace just the noisy TRV head and monitor its noise while slowly reducing its setting and see if it does get more and more noisy.
You might also check that the TRVs are installed on the flow (hot) side of the rads even though theoretically it shouldn't matter if they are bi directional, a lot of experienced installers on here say that it does.
 
I hear a noise in all of my radiators. The higher the TRV setting the louder the noise gets. If I turn the TRV down to a low setting the noise goes away, presumably because the radiator is no longer heating up.

The noise sounds like air moving around the system, although it's very loud. It sounds like an airpline moving along the run with the jets blowing.

This sound has been happening for a while. I've bled all of the radiators, the pressure in the boiler is about 1.7 bar, I've tried different pump settings low, medium, and high but the sound remains.

The boiler is a Worcester Bosch Greenstar 30i ERP Condensing Combi Boiler and it is installed in the loft.

Any ideas what this problem could be?
Trvs mate. Should be bi directional but if they're sludged up or not opening properly they'll whistle
 
Trvs mate. Should be bi directional but if they're sludged up or not opening properly they'll whistle

The noise is loudest on my hallway radiator which has the highest TRV setting. Last week the old radiator and TRV were replaced with a Stelrad radiator and Drayton TRV4.
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Its hard to see why the boiler cycles with all trvs open fully, the minimum output of a 30 kw boiler shouldn't IMO be more than 5 or 6 kw and with 7 rads fully open then the heat demand should be a fair bit higher than this. Range rating the max output to 21kw is a good idea but this has no effect on the minimum output, I don't think you can range rate the minimum output downwards beyond a set minimum, if at all, you could just check that out in case it has been set higher than its minimum.
In case of any fault with the TRVs, I would suggest removing all the heads then with boiler firing steadily replace just the noisy TRV head and monitor its noise while slowly reducing its setting and see if it does get more and more noisy.
You might also check that the TRVs are installed on the flow (hot) side of the rads even though theoretically it shouldn't matter if they are bi directional, a lot of experienced installers on here say that it does.

The TRV is on the right-hand side of each radiator. On some rads the pressure release is above the TRV and on some it's not.
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I'll take a look into the minimum output. I couldn't find this easily in the manual for my boiler or on the LCD display.
 
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Just feel the flow and return on each rad, the hotter one will be the flow.

There is probably no adjustment available for range rating the min output, the min output should be shown somewhere in some manual.
 

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