In this material we want to explain to residents of apartment buildings how to shut off a heating battery connected to a central heating network. Such a need may arise for various reasons at any time of the year. In a private house, this is not a problem, but in an apartment where radiators are connected to a common network with neighboring heating appliances, overlapping batteries can lead to negative consequences.
When you have to turn off the radiators
There are several situations when you need to shut off water in a battery:
- in the event of an emergency threatening flooding of their own and neighboring homes with hot coolant;
- if you decide to paint the radiator during the heating season;
- when it is necessary to change or rinse the battery without blocking the riser;
- you need to limit the flow of heat to a room where it is hot in winter.
Note. Some apartment owners practice shutting down heating batteries for the summer while preserving the coolant. The goal is to protect the radiators from clogging during the autumn start-up of the system when there is a lot of rust running through the pipes. Below we will explain how to do it right.
Now the main point: You will never have problems with how to disconnect the radiator from the centralized system, if it is connected in the correct way using shutoff valves (ball valves). You can shut off the flow of coolant at any time, if such a need arises, while not violating the thermal regime of adjacent apartments. The shutdown algorithm is simple:
- Turn off the bottom and then the top tap on the battery.
- If you plan to paint the heater, then the previous step is enough. Wait until the radiator turns cold and paint.
- When you need to replace the batteries in the middle of winter, then before removing each heater, release the pressure through the Mayevsky tap. Then, turn out the bottom plug and carefully drain the water, then untwist the joints and dismantle the device.
A separate question is how to turn on the heating battery correctly, so that there is no air plug left in it, which prevents the maximum heating of the surface and air in the apartment. Here the algorithm is similar: you need to open the lower valve, then the upper one, and at the end release the remaining air with the help of a Mayevsky cock.
Note. If you do the opposite and first open the upper valve, you risk leaving some of the air inside the sections of the device. This is not critical, but the airing procedure will have to be repeated several times.
What to do with a jammed ball valve
If ball valves are not rotated for years, then they tend to sour and jam. In such a situation, do not try to solve the problem physically and do not force the “butterfly” with pliers or a gas key. It is made of a brittle alloy and is likely to break. Proceed as follows:
- Unscrew the fixing nut and remove the butterfly-type handle from the stem.
- On most of these valves, under the handle there will be a nut clamping a plastic gland. Loosen it by turning the key half a turn. If there is no nut, go to the next step.
- Take an adjustable wrench or other device that allows you to firmly grasp the flats on the stock. With little effort, turn it as far as possible.
- When you feel resistance, turn the stem back all the way and again forward, trying to turn it a few more degrees. Work carefully and without haste!
- Thus, turn the valve 90 °, then tighten the stuffing box nut and replace the handle.
Tip.If WD-40 aerosol grease is found in the household, apply it to the stem and wait 5-10 minutes before rotating.
Be doubly careful when shutting off batteries with soured taps during the heating season. You’ll rush too much and put in a lot of effort - break off a metal rod or ball, and in the worst case, the valve body will burst. A stream of hot water can burn from a crack, which can burn you. As long as you go down to the basement and close the heating pipe, the coolant will damage the interior of the room, and how much the apartment repair costs now, you have some idea.
Shutdown of radiators without fittings
It is no secret that in most apartments to this day there are old cast-iron radiators or steel convectors without any shut-off fittings, which makes it impossible to overlap them during the heating season. Moreover, according to the old heating scheme, convectors in high-rise buildings are connected to risers without direct sections - bypasses. Therefore, in the event of an accident with a coolant leak, it is necessary to proceed as follows:
- Try to substitute some container for collecting hot water. If the jet hits to the side, wrap a dense cloth around the breakthrough, so that water flows down it into the bucket.
- Call the dispatch service of your company - the supplier of thermal energy and report an accident.
- While the service staff is getting there, give them access to the basement, find the keys, open the door and so on.
- Try to block the riser yourself.
A few words about how to properly turn off the heating pipe. Find in the basement the thermal point of your entrance and vertical pipes cut into a large-diameter trunk or into a common collector. Track where they are going to identify the emergency riser and turn it off with a tap. Contact someone on the cell phone who can confirm that the geyser eruption in the apartment has stopped. Could not find your pipe - close all the valves in turn until you find the right one.
Attention! Do not try to control the basement valves that are stuck from rust. When they cannot be closed manually, it is better to wait for the plumbers team, they will find a way to stop the flow of coolant. And it will turn out to be a very awkward situation when you break down the main fittings, leaving the apartment building without heat for the duration of the repair.
It is also worth considering the question of how to shut off the battery if it is hot in the apartment due to non-compliance by the service provider with the temperature schedule of the boiler room. It would seem that in the presence of valves, the problem is solved by manually closing the taps. But after lowering the temperature in the rooms, the valves will have to be reopened. So you get tired of turning taps long before the end of the heating season, so you need to think about how you can adjust the heat transfer of radiators. Options are as follows:
- if possible, install a thermostatic valve on each battery, restricting the flow of the coolant and automatically maintaining the set temperature in the room;
- it is beautiful to close the heater with a blank screen with small holes if there are no shutoff valves on the inlets.
Important. The ball valve is not a means of adjustment, it is intended only to completely cut off or open the passage to the coolant. In the "half closed" mode, it will not give the desired effect, but will fail much earlier.
Thanks to worn-out pipelines, district heating systems are famous for dirty water, quickly clogging shallow ducts. Therefore, conventional valves with thermal heads will not live here for a long time, you need to buy special valves with increased throughput, which are produced by well-known brands Danfoss and Herz. How to put them on the connection to the radiator is shown below in the diagram and described in this material.
When the apartment is hot in the middle of winter and there is no adjusting fittings, there is nothing left for the residents but to close the battery in the room with a decorative screen. The principle is simple: the radiator will heat the air inside the box, after which the heat transfer rate will drop sharply due to a small difference in the temperature of the air and the surface. That is, the coolant will give less energy, and the amount of hot air coming out from under the screen will be limited by the size of the decorative openings. How to assemble and put on the heater a nice MDF box, shown in the video:
How to shut off batteries for the summer
The purpose of the event is to avoid the ingress of dirt and rust into the radiators, which goes along with the coolant through the pipeline network during the autumn start-up of the system, which is important for aluminum and bimetallic batteries with narrow ducts. The method is simple: in the spring, it is necessary to close the taps on the connections to the heater, since it is not known whether there is water in the batteries in the summer. Typically, during this period, technical services empty the risers and radiators in apartment buildings, contributing to the damage to metals by corrosion.
Tip. If you have Soviet-made or new-style cast-iron batteries installed in your apartment, then there is nothing to worry about blockages and corrosion. Cast iron is valuable in that it is “friendly” with a poor-quality coolant, and the passage sections in it are large enough not to clog.
The order of the event is as follows:
- Choose the moment when the heating almost does not work, but the water still circulates through the pipes. Turn off the taps near the battery (first lower, then upper).
- When autumn arrives, wait until the heating system starts. The event is characterized by the well-known murmur of water in pipes.
- After making sure that the risers are heated, after a couple of days, open the valves and remove the air using a Mayevsky cock. During this time, dirty impurities in the coolant will pass through the pipes past your radiators.
Another tip. In the event that you missed the moment of emptying the heating system, still turn off the taps on the battery. In the autumn, turn them on 1-2 days after the start of the heating system, as shown in the video:
There is such a myth: if you turn off the taps of the battery, then the hot water after cooling will decrease in volume, a vacuum will occur, which will cause the heater to crack. This is false information, since compressing water by 5-6% will not create pressure that can destroy the metal. In order for a cast-iron radiator to be damaged, it must reach a value of at least 15 Bar, for steel it will require more than 20 Bar, and aluminum products can withstand 30 Bar.
Conclusion
It is very simple to shut off the heating battery in the apartment itself, if it is correctly connected to the heating network and quite troublesome if there is no shut-off valve. It is understood that the work is carried out in the winter and the pipelines are under pressure from the coolant, in the summer there are no such problems. Finally, the recommendation: to remove and replace the radiators, select warm weather on the street, then according to the temperature schedule, the boiler room does not supply too hot water. Repair work will be more convenient and safer.