This might be a stupid question, but I’m willing to risk it to solve this issue. I live in a small NYC studio apartment, and it has a floor radiator for heat. There’s a little hole about the size of three pinheads where hot air sprays out, and it’s LOUD. I mean, really loud. The sound of the spraying, I mean. But see, the thing is, the radiator *itself *gets hot enough to heat my apartment without needing all that hot air coming out.
So my question is, should I find some way to block the hole and just let the heat radiate (ha) off the thing, or is blocking that hot air a Bad Thing To Do? Part of me thinks all that would happen is the hot air would swim around inside the radiator and warm up the place just fine, but then part of me thinks the hot air would get backed up and make its way down to the basement of the building and cause some sort of explosion. But maybe that’s ridiculous, I have no idea.
You need to call your landlord. The doohickey needs to be replaced.
Now, not all landlords actually know how radiators work, so I’ve spent several tenancies with whistling, squalling, loud as fuck radiators, too. But then I moved into a place where the guy did know what he was doing, and he assured me in no uncertain terms that no, radiators shouldn’t make sounds like that and there shouldn’t be visible air/steam escaping, and I needed to let him know ASAP when that happened so he could replace the…doohickey. Sorry, I don’t remember the name.
…My SO now tells me it’s the “high pressure relief valve”, and no, you should NOT try to block the holes, that’s not safe. The holes are there so that when the pressure is too high, the air escapes instead of the radiator going kablooey. If it’s whistling all the time, the pressure is too high in the radiator or the valve has failed. It needs to be fixed by someone who knows what they’re doing.
Thanks for the info. So it sounds like I can either call my landlord, or call someone who knows what they’re doing. Sadly, it’s not one and the same person.
The hot air spraying out is intermittent, if that clears things up. I assume when the room temperature gets below whatever the basement thermostat is set on, it comes on automatically. It’s no problem during the day, but at night when the thing comes on six or seven times and wakes me up every time… grr…
LOL. Right. I don’t know how apartment rentals work in NY (I understand it’s quite different than here in the Civilized World ;)), but here I’d call the landlord first, to give her the option of fixing it herself or hiring someone or having me hire someone and pay them, then deduct that off the rent (with a receipt).
Yep, that’s exactly it. When the boiler’s not actively pumping hot steam into the radiator system, the pressure diminishes and the pressure release valve doesn’t need to release anything. When the thermostat tells the boiler to kick on again, pressure builds and "SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
I swear, I thought for years that it was just what radiators sound like. Apparently not. A well maintained radiator is very nearly silent, all the time, with the exception of a few clicks and quiet bangs when they go from cold to warm and the metal expands a little bit.
Can you take a picture of the radiator? If this is a steam system, it could just be the air vent, which is supposed to release air from the radiator, to make way for the steam. Once the radiator gets hot, the valve closes, and it’s just steam. When the radiator cools off, it opens again to let air back into the system.
These are fairly simple to replace, but you should probably have a plumber do it, just in case something gets stripped.
You may be on to something here, Cheesesteak (and now I’m craving one). The radiator looks like this, and the air vent (on the left of the radiator) looks like the one on the right in this picture.
The air vent is without a doubt where the hot air (and hence, the loud noise) is coming out from, although I didn’t know what it was called until now. I fiddled around with it some today and discovered that it unscrews pretty easily. Of course, then steam billowed out of the radiator so I quickly put it back on. But maybe I just need a new air vent, huh? I can probably go into any hardware store and pick one up, right?
Yes you are talking about an air vent not a pressure relief valve. If the air can not get out of the radiator then steam can not get in and the radiator will cool. I do not know about NY but most places you will need to go to a plumming supply house.
I lived in a prewar NYC apartment building for many years which had very noisy radiators. When it got unbearably loud, I would call the super, who would send a plumber, to fix the radiators. There would be some improvement but it was still pretty noisy.
I don’t think you should try adjusting them yourself. You could get scalded by the steam.
Yep, they generally go for $10 or so. Over here in Jersey, they sell them at the local hardware store and the Home Depot, you should be able to find them easily in NYC, there’s still a lot of steam heat in town.
Wait for the radiator to be stone cold when you change it, no sense getting burnt. I also put some teflon tape on the threads to prevent any leaks.
For those who are interested, it was indeed the air vent. I picked up a new one for 5 bucks from the hardware store two blocks away, and now the thing is so quiet it almost makes me want to cry. Thanks again!