Genius Radiator Valve is making a noise when heating
Normal operation
The Genius Radiator Valves are the quietest valves on the market that we are aware of. The noise level produced by a valve is < 30dBA.
They use a stepper motor they are also very efficient. The valve learns what position it needs to go to when the room needs to heat up, and to be able to achieve a certain temperature in a room it will slowly go straight to this valve position, making very little audible noise.
Vibrating, buzzing or banging
The noise is most likely coming from the valve body (the metal part that the water flows through) and not the Genius Radiator Valve. It is making a noise because it is on the outflow side of the radiator rather than the in-flow side, and it is a non-reversible valve body. This problem might not have been apparent before you fitted the Genius Radiator Valves because your old TRVs were not closing the radiators down properly. This is because of the wax in traditional TRVs ages and no longer works properly, leaving the valve fully open or fully closed most of the time.
The vibrating happens because the flow of water should be coming in from under the valve when it is on the 'inflow' side of the radiator, and this pushes the valve pin up against the valve head. When it is orientated incorrectly the flow is over the top of the valve and there is nothing to stop it closing completely apart from a small spring inside the valve body.
Because the Genius Radiator Valve controls the pin to a very high degree of accuracy, it is often hovering around the very slightly open position of the pin, and if oriented incorrectly the valve body opens and closes at a very high speed and this is causing the valve to vibrate and make the noise you can hear.
There are several possible solutions to this:
- If the valve bodies are the Danfoss RA-FS type they have a small grey cap which can be rotated 90 degrees and this swaps the flow from under the valve to over the valve and stops the valve from vibrating.
- If the valve body is the single directional type, you can (as a temporary measure) turn down the lock shield which is at the other end of the radiator. This reduces the effectiveness of the radiator and its ability to heat the room, but it may stop the valve from vibrating because there is less water flowing through the radiator.
- An alternative would be to swap the ends of the radiator over so that the valve body is on the correct (inflow) end of the radiator, or change the valve over to a bi-directional valve such as the Danfoss RA-FS type.
I can hear the water rushing
Some customers report that the radiator valves become a little noisy when the Heat Genius system is installed, and this is because the water is now flowing through fewer radiators in the property, so the ones that are on are now getting more water from the main central heating pump. To reduce this noise you may find that there is a speed selector on the pump and we would recommend reducing the speed of the pump. If you later find that the radiators do not warm up enough you may have to increase the pump speed again.
