The radiator makes unbearable noises throu out the night, which drives her insane. We think that this is due to air pockets in the pipes, we can hear crackling and water drops.
The heating system is common to the whole building, and I cant turn off hot water.
How do i open this shit
The radiator makes unbearable noises throu out the night, which drives her insane.
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B008MVYL7C
Works wonders in letting me sleep like a baby through my wife’s chainsaw-like snoring. Just make sure they’re inserted firmly enough and not sticking too far out or in.
You’re welcome.
find the radiator that’s at the highest point/farthest from the boiler, get a container, open the valve you have pictured there and close it when there doesn’t seem to be any more air coming out. use the container to catch any water. make sure to refill the water heater for your heating system, they recycle the water, so the input valves are normally shut.
edit, just saw that you have a shared system, so ignore that last bit. but when in doubt, call the building super.
also, the fact that your GF gave you “one afternoon” to fix it, it kinda sounds like a toxic personality trait. if there’s anything else worrisome about her behavior, she might benefit from therapy. Having been in a relationship with someone with the dark triad, it was shit, and i kinda wish i would have been able to get her the help she needed.
Delete your therapy break up with your lawyer and hit your face
ITT: People telling OP to break up with her because we are absolutely certain that she is crazy and only gave him one afternoon to fix this, and there is no way she could have been losing sleep for days or weeks while asking him to do something about it, like hold the landlord accountable.
While I agree with this, if it bothers her she can take care of it her own damn self.
I guess op could want to take a crack at it before calling the super. But like. Figure your shit out.
I thought you were being hyperbolic and then scrolled down.
Holy shit, it’s no wonder sex and relationships are crashing through the floor right now. Ya’ll don’t know how to have human interactions anymore.
Nobody bats an eye when it’s worded like “My bud told me I couldn’t do this in 8 hours, said I should call a pro, I said I could do it.” You people out there have no idea what the tone is like here.
If your partner isn’t a friend who can challenge you and be your “bud” you’re not with a good partner. Is this what you guys think relationships are really like? Dancing on fucking eggshells and being given ultimatums? It’s a goddamn self report.
Or maybe people aren’t that serious about it
Why can’t she call the landlord, cat got her tongue?
How do you know she’s the main tenant and not on a sublease? How do you know what OP means when he said his GF ‘gave’ him one afternoon? If he doesn’t get it fixed, she’ll do what? Stop coming over? Stop sharing finances? Break up?
So many unasked questions and yet everyone is quick to assume that the GF is insane. I wonder why that is.a
Look if I were to guess I’d say most probably she never said anything of the kind, and that’s just the op making his otherwise dull question a little spicy for the people to get involved.
But if you take the post at face value and set aside all your biases, you have to agree that this sounds kinda bitchy and entitled. Truth is we don’t know anything about the situation, so we can only go with what op gave us. We don’t know if he’s the owner or just renting, what country he’s in, or even if he’s a he btw.
From what was said alone, the question that I have is why is it op’s responsibility to do something about it. Seems like a household problem that op didn’t cause and one that if she lived alone she would have to deal with somehow. So asking someone else to fix it and setting ultimatums sounds like someone who’s used to having servants.
This comment section really shows how important it is to specify your location when asking for advice.
Airing out radiators is like the simplest task one can do where I’m from. One flat heat screwdriver and a rag for the dripping, and you’re done faster than you can even call a landlord or repair firm. No crazy steam contraptions.
So you’re either calling for an expensive and time wasting repair unnecessarily or catching a faceful of scalding steam, if you take advice from the wrong part of the world…
Spotify - Brown Noise 12 hours. Blast that nice and loud. Get a fan. Call the super.
How do I open this shit?
You call an expert/building maintenance and don’t fuck with it yourself.
Break up with her
The heating system is common to the whole building, and I cant turn off hot water.
How do i open this shit
Here’s the cool part: you fucking don’t.
It’s not your building, heating system, or property, so you don’t fucking open/break it. You open it and you’re likely to be dealing with an uncontrollable amount of rather hot water, and a very angry landlord/neighbors.
Call your landlord (AND DOCUMENT IT) and complain until they fix it or tell you to fuck off. Don’t do their maintenance for them unless you’re willing to pay for any repair costs when they have to undo and fix properly.
Don’t just call, make sure written request or digital. Gotta have a CYA (cover your ass) if you go to court.
Here is the evidence of the complaint…
Edit to add: can say "per our conversation on the phone… "
100%, can’t believe I forgot to put that part in. I added a note on documentation, because you’ll def need that if things progress that far.
Even if she’s not renting, like it’s a condo association or co-op situation, do the same thing. Report it. Could be a sign of something worse in the whole system.
Why one day? Are you filming a reality TV show where you need artificial time pressure to make it seem entertaining?
Talk to the building owner.
If you get this wrong you’ll likely cause havoc across the whole building.
Especially because some idiot painted over the key and thread.
I have no idea why everyone here is saying to not do jack shit. Like, is the us system so different than what im used to?
Here is an information dump of what i know, and what my experiences is from 9 years of being the handyman in an elderly home. And yes, i called in experts enough times on heating issues. I know my ( local ) shit.
Would you describe the sound like a knocking, rumbling sound? If so, turn it all off, check the pressure of the heater and get a plumber. Youre pushing steam or nothing through the system and the piping doesnt like it. Scary sound if its bad tbh. Also a serious issue you need a plumber for, as the heater or preassure tank is likely fucked.
Would you describe the sound like blub blub, airbubbles popping or a waterfall? If so, there is air in the closed loop of the radiators. It happens, and its recommended to check all radiators once a year when it gets colder. Nothing bad about it, easy to fix/remedy.
You can also validate this by turning on the heating system and noticing, on top of the sound, that only part of the radiator heats up.
This is usually a problem with the highest radiator of your system, or the farthest radiator of your loop.
If it happens more than once a year -> you might have a leak somewhere ,if water pressure remains the same, get a plumber to check on the system or radiator system.The later can easily be remedied. Go to the radiator that makes sound and try and find the following :
It is an release valve intended to let air in, or out, of the system. It is on the top side of the radiator, on the opposite side of the knob. Turn on the heating system, wait a bit for it to heat up. Then use the special key, or screw driver to very very slowly turn it open. You will hear air escape at one point, or drips of water coming out of the small hole you see in the picture. If you can no longer hear air escape, or a steady small stream of water comes out, all air is released and you can close it again.
I’m with you there. Sure, if you get stupid and screw the valve all the way out, you are fucked and flooded. But to unscrew it completely, you’d have to exercise an overwhelming amount of stupidity.
Degassing radiators is a really simple operation - you either have a special square inverted key, which fits the valve or just use a flat screwdriver and slowly turn the degassing valve until it starts hissing. You let it out until the air turns into a very small stream of radiator water - but the stream is extremely mild and if you close it after a seond it does so, there’s usually no more then couple of drops of water.
I have no idea why there should be some sort of superheated steam like anyone is freaking out. Radiator water is usually around 50C if you have an old system or even lower if your heater uses new fancy equiterm curves. Nothing that would burn you.
I guess they are from US or something. Over where I live it’s not that big of a deal, radiators have valves built in to allow safe outgassing like you’re describing.
What is important to say: only turn the little round bolt with the slot in it, do not screw out the whole valve.
The other comments sound really scary, does the US have another system? Why should there be steam coming out?
I don’t have first hand experience, but I think NYC and possibly some other large US cities do actually operate on a steam network. It’s not a closed loop hot water system like I have in my house, from what I understand you purchase hot steam like you would buy electricity.
Take all of that with a grain of salt until someone that knows more can chime in.
Whoa, what the hell? Id like to know more if true!
EDIT: what the actual living hell???
https://www.reddit.com/r/Brooklyn/comments/1gjdpug/someone_explain_to_me_how_radiators_work_in_nyc/Fascinating, thanks
Oh, I know this!
Radiators run at different temperatures, radiators could run at around 80 C which is enough to “steam”. In my part of the world, we’ve lowered the water temperature to not scald people neither on the radiators nor if they’d start leaking. OTOH we now have more radiator surface area and insulation.
Oh valid point. Dont unscrew the whole valve haha. Only the slotted key hole!
Steam might come out if you have a very major pressure issue or water temprature is way way too high. Either case, slowly opening the valve solves all off that
Was going to say this exact thing, good thing someone else of sound sense has typed the correct answer. Just turn the screw pictured open (counter-clockwise) ever so slightly to let air out (makes hiss) and tighten once water comes out (makes no sound).
Source: Nordic man of the house. I did this a lot until we put in a new heating system with an automatic valve at the main heat reservoir.
How do i open this shit
Don’t
Call the owner to fix it. If it causes water damage, you’ll be on the hook for that because you fucked with radiator.
Also what’s with the “gave me one afternoon” bit? No one can “give you” time. Do you “give” her afternoons to do a chore? How would that go for you? That sounds like a mother telling a 5 year old they better clean their room “this afternoon or else no dessert”
I’ve been given time to fix something myself before we call a professional, which seems reasonable to me. Even the time window of an afternoon, for something as important as heat makes sense, because you don’t want to be unheated overnight and have your pipes freeze
You need the radiator key to bleed the air out of the system. Since you said this is common throughout the building I recommend you don’t touch this at all and let the building owner handle the issue.
My dude, if you open that you’re going to get blasted with steam. Call the guy who owns the building and tell him the problem sounds expensive.
