Radiator positions

[tommyleestaples]

I am about to extend our house adding another two bedrooms and trying to plan ahead and currently thinking about where the radiators should go. In our house currently all the radiators are on the external walls. The new walls are going to be cavity walls or insulated timber walls on the rear bedrooms. 

 

Should the radiators go on the external walls as the others are in the house or could they go on internal walls? We was planning to have the headboard of beds up against the external walls bit this would obviously block the radiator to a certain extent. 

 

 

[JohnMo]

Never seen the point of them on an external wall, even on our 1830s house I moved then to internal walls.

[Mr Punter]

Proper old school plan!  I am surprised they used millimetres!

[Iceverge]

Apparently there's some kind of air curtain effect to improve the comfort as the rising air from the rads counteracts the cooling air from the window panes. I'm not convinced. Seems like a way siteing your rads to loose heat to the outside as swiftly as possible. 

 

Under the windows helps sometime with furniture placement however. 

 

 

 

 

[Iceverge]

13 hours ago, Mr Punter said:

Proper old school plan!  I am surprised they used millimetres!

 

I do like hand drawn plans. Somehow they're easier on the eye than cad drawings. 

[RobLe]

The argument I heard was that a large natural convection pattern sets up with a window opposite a radiator, leading to an annoying cold draft from the window along the floor to the rad.  Of course, decent windows and so low heat loss will mean this airflow speed will be low so don’t worry about it.

[JohnMo]

8 minutes ago, RobLe said:

The argument I heard was that a large natural convection pattern sets up with a window opposite a radiator, leading to an annoying cold draft from the window along the floor to the rad.  Of course, decent windows and so low heat loss will mean this airflow speed will be low so don’t worry about it.

If you have single glazed windows you should have good thick curtains to help insulate, so this effect is killed off. Double glazing and triple glazing the effect would be minimised, the same would also be true for low temperature heating systems as strong updraft currents would not be there.