Confused about different types of radiator materials

[julia]

thank you all so much for all your replies...I've read them all, but am still confused! my mum's going to speak to a technition from nu heat tomorrow, so hopefully we'll have some answers then. thanks!

 

[oldplumber]

i took about thirty brass towel rails out of gt ormond st hospital about 5 years ago and they had been on the hot water circuit for 70 years no sign of any corrosion any brass or copper towel rail can go on the hot water circuit
its the cheapy ladders that are normally made of chromed steel you cant use

thieving blighter, no wonder the kiddies are cold seriously, the advice came straight out of a text book and having seen the sate of some 2 yr old modern gate valves on hw circuits i wouldnt use a modern brass rad, your 70 years old items where made properly back then remember

 

[Bernie2]

Hmm!

It seems to be true that stuff is not made as good today as it was years ago. I thought at one time it was me getting a bit older. But apparently not if washing machines are anything to go by.
By now they should have been able to make a washing machine that hardly ever breaks down. The thing is, it seems they break down even before the 12 months guarantee is out.

One explanation is that to keep costs down they use untried pcb's if they are cheaper than the ones they use now. I think Potterton got into a lot of trouble over using cheap pcb's in one of their boilers not so long ago. I don't think the same applies to boilers though as I can understand up to point that washing machines manufacturers try to keep prices down and instead of being around the £200 mark as many are, built to older standards they would be more like £600 and people would not buy them.

Boilers however are not cheap, they just seem to be overpriced.

You have to look carefully at what sales people say, sometimes I suppose it may just be a cheap added component on the pcb that does something or other new and they charge a fortune for it.

Lets not kid ourselves boiler development hasn't really improved much in the last ten years I don't think. Its about time we started getting reliability out of boilers, not told its got new ge gaws, and you can get .000001% more efficiency out of them, you may be able to get that if you turned out the standby light, when you shut the boiler down.

 

[that bloke.]

i took about thirty brass towel rails out of gt ormond st hospital about 5 years ago

you dont still happen to have any of those old brass towel rails do you?