Radiator won’t heat

[Sausagefingers9]

Can anyone help? We have a radiator in the living room that hasn’t been able to heat up since we moved in 2 years ago. Fine in the summer but now it’s cold I really want it to work!

We’ve had someone round to look at it, they cleaned it and said they can’t get it to work. Can’t remember exact words but basically the hot water won’t go to it. I find this hard to believe as we have a radiator in the room behind that works, although I’m no expert.

I’ve tried turning the lock shield valve to no effect. The pipes to the radiator are luke warm.
Any ideas on how I can fix it?

I assume it’s not blocked or need bleeding as you say it has been cleaned. So your radiators may need balancing ( does it wam up if you turn off all your other radiators?) or your pipe work may be too small for the number of radiators.

Could be anything - try bleeding any air out of it, then look at whether your boiler system is properly pressurised and check the pipes aren't squashed somewhere (ie if they are the tiny thin old ones). If you turn a few other radiators off does it heat - which could be a system balance thing. I would get someone in to service boiler and check out whole system myself

does it warm up if you turn off all your other radiators?

exactly.

If turning other rads off and it's still cold, although pipes heading towards the rad are not, it could be a stuck pin , inside the rad control valve.
Unscrew the thermostatic control, and then either tap it sharply ( but not too hard) to free the pin, or simply replace.
You could try swopping the valve for one off a rad that works - if the thermostatic valve was the problem, the rad should now heat up, confirming that this was the issue.

We had this. I turned all other radiators off and it went piping hot. I then turned the other radiators back on but lower numbers in the bedrooms. It works properly now.

Would agree with trying to bleed the rad first.
If not successful then take the thermostatic control knob off, you should see a small metal bar (sometime referred to a pin) using a cloth and a pair of pliers (you don't want to mark the pin) gently see if you can move the pin either up or down. Also check the other valve (called the lockshield) you may need an allen key (hexagonal key), they usually have a white valve cap on them or a metal blanking cap remove cap. When you see the hexagonal screw turn it a couple of turns and check rad temp. Sometimes people turn the rad off using the lockshield valve.