So I have a towel dryer installed on my bathroom wall, the kind that runs warm water through a series of pipes, keeping my towels dry, warm and fluffy. In any case, whoever owned my apartment at some point failed at life and installed the towel dryer upside down, with the nipple to let out excess air at the bottom instead of the top. In the last few weeks, the whole thing has gone sadly cold and water doesn’t seem to flow out any more, and I’m presuming that this is due to a buildup of air in the pipes…so the question is, how do I vent the thing?
drill a hole in the top and install a vent.
or
disconnect and install correctly.
IMHO, at this time of year there is no call for heat and your boiler is probably not heating any water.
Have you checked that water is even flowing through the pipes? Check for any valves or shut-off. Alternatively, the coil may be plugged somewhere.
Are you sure it’s upside -down? Have you tried to bleed the coil from the valve where it is? If you suspect that there is air in the lines you can bleed it from a higher point in the sytem.
My soldering skills aren’t that great, and I’m kind of stuck with the fact that the pipes lead down from the ceiling (this towel dryer was constructed with pipes leading up from the floor in mind).
If you open the vent and nothing comes out, it sounds like the boiler is off entirely and you’ve got a weird towel rack hanging from the ceiling for the next few months.
I don’t see anything wrong with having your towel dryer “upside-down”. No air can become trapped in it, so it doesn’t matter that the vent is at the bottom.
There’s no benefit in venting the towel dryer if it’s not the system high point (or local high point). You say that the flow and return pipes come down from the ceiling - that implies that if there is air in the dryer, the pipes are full of air, and it can only be released at a point that’s higher than your ceiling.
You mention that you live in an apartment, so I’m guessing the towel dryer is fed by a boiler and central heating pipework that are outside your control. It seems likely that the boiler has simply been turned off for the summer. If any pipework does need to be vented, it would be the responsibility of a maintenance supervisor.