Radiators Not Heating

When this becomes an emergency

• One zone stays cold while the rest of the house comes up to temperature normally.
• A radiator is warm across the bottom and cold along the top.
• There's a gurgling sound inside a radiator whenever the circulator starts.
• An upstairs room added later never gets warm no matter how long the boiler runs.

What a pro does

A cold radiator with a working boiler is a distribution problem. Air is the first suspect, because trapped air rides to the high points of a hot-water loop and stops circulation dead in that branch, which is why the top of a radiator goes cold before the bottom does. A tech bleeds where it makes sense and then asks why the air got there in the first place, since a loop that keeps taking on air usually isn't sealed the way it should be. Farmhouses that grew by addition are the interesting cases here: a loop extended to a back bedroom in the seventies, then tapped again for a bathroom later, ends up unbalanced enough that the farthest emitter never gets its share of flow. Balancing valves, circulator sizing, and zone valve position all get checked. A zone valve stuck closed produces the same cold room as a failed pump and costs a fraction as much to put right.

Frequently asked questions

Radiators Not Heating?

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