Hello good community,

I recently moved to an apartment, and I need some advice on the condition/using of the heater in the bathroom.

I noticed that when I set the knob to the snowflake symbol, there is a constant hissing noise in the entire heater indicating that the water is flowing. And the inlet/outlet pipes at the bottom are very hot, the red marked area in the picture. However the rest of the heater is at a normal temperature.
This is never the case with other heaters in the apartment. The inlet/outlet pipes are at room temperature in living room, bedroom.

Questions:
1. Am I allowed to keep the knob at the “snowflake” in summer?

  1. If the inlet and outlet pipes are still hot when the heater is turned off (only in this heater at bathroom), am I using more gas all the time?
    I don’t want to end up with a huge gas bill.
    Or is this all normal?

I’ve also reached out to the landlord, but because of the weekend I might get an answer next week.

Thank you for your help in advance!

by vineethbp

4 comments

  1. That’s a bypass vent, they work like this. They allow the water to circulate even if all vents are closed.

  2. Thats not a bypass, that just hotter valves fuse and return. You know to heat up this thing it needs hot water flowing through and the one connector to the body of the heater is hot water inside and the other one is returning … to have a flow inside.

    You can take this “Thermostat” on to the snowflake. The snowflake just means frees protection, means it will open the flow if it is close to freezing inside your bathroom.

    If you need more gas to let this thing running? SURE. I am not quite sure if it is necessary to heat up your bath towels while taking a shower, some people like it, I don’t need it even I have one myself.

  3. 1) Yes, you can leave the controller set to snowflake, even in summer!

    2) Hot water is produced somewhere (a. in the hot water boiler in your home, or b. central heating perhaps in the basement) and pumped hot to the radiators.
    When the valve is set to snowflake – i.e. off – the hot water returns to the circuit almost unchanged = no to extremely low consumption and therefore the lowest heating costs

    If the controller/valve is open, heat is released via the radiator in the rooms and the cooler water is pumped back, has to be reheated and comes back hotter = high heating costs!

    But to measure consumption, there is almost always some kind of evaporator attached to the radiator! Do you have that too?

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