New towel radiator dripping - is it easy to fix?

[LeakyRad]

Background: We had to have our bathroom replaced a few months ago, turned into quite a long tiresome job (house is old, threw up lots of surprises). I think the plumbers basically ran out of steam by the end and rushed the last bits - the finish is a bit sloppy and they skipped a few small things that I had requested. But overall the new bathroom seemed to be working fine, so we paid the final invoice and in fact have been using it without problems since.

At the weekend I randomly thought "oh we've never used our new towel radiator, hope it's OK for winter" and went to turn on the valve. (Don't know why I did it, because our heating isn't on anyway ) And it immediately began dripping water slowly from one of the joints. I quickly turned it off but it carried on dripping gently for quite a while, I had to put a towel under it to catch the drips. I checked that the joint was tightly screwed (it was definitely at least "finger tight") so I don't know why it dripped. Haven't dared to turn it back on.

Do I need to call the plumber back? I don't really want to, not to mention that I'd feel a right numpty if this was a super-easy DIY fix.

When you say you opened the valve you don't mean the what you've pictured do you? I doubt you'd be able to move that with your fingers?

I'd guess they didn't let water into the radiator. Left it dry, now you've opened the radiator to the water in the central heating system and it's showing where they've not fitted it correctly. There's alot of ptfe tape there I wonder if they struggled to get it sealed. Has the pressure on your boiler gone down?

If the work was only done a few months ago and you can trust them, then you should call them back. If it's leaking already, that hasn't been fitted properly, and they should remedy it for free.
I speak as someone who has just had major bathroom work done, and I do NOT trust the original plumbers. I have some problems right now with a built in toilet leaking, and I do not want Bodger Bill back; I'm going to have to get someone else in to remedy the work. If the cost is low, I'll just suck it up, but otherwise, small claims court here we come. Moral of my story is not to trust reviews from websites like Checkatrade or Trustatrader. Advertisers pay to be on there, so you can guess where the websites loyalties lie.

I have to wonder why they left it with the valve closed? Maybe they wanted to hide the fact it wasn't sealed properly.

The compression joint (Red arrow, assuming that's where the leak is) connecting to the valve may not be tight enough. It needs to be spanner tight (within reason) not just finger tight.

If you're comfortable nipping up the compression nut with a spanner then try that (it may just need a quarter turn or so), otherwise call them back. For avoidance of doubt, if you are facing towards the valve from the left-hand side of this picture, then you need to turn the nut clockwise to tighten it.

Thanks for replies so far!

@Goldenhummingbird I turned the radiator on at the valve-turn-y cylinder on the right. And then water dripped out of the compression joint where I put the arrow (thank you @MaybeSmaller! I didn't know what it was called). Nothing dripped out of the joint with the PTFE tape. I'll try tightening it further with a spanner... if that doesn't work then I guess I'll have to call them to come back 😩

Pressure on boiler looks unchanged, but I reacted quickly to turn it back off and so I wouldn't expect that a lot of water escaped (relative to the amount of water in the whole heating system).

I don't know why they left the radiator empty. It's possible they simply forgot, because as I said, the job dragged on a long time with many complications and by the end they were pretty desperate to finish.

Like @MaybeSmaller says a quarter turn or so may well be all it needs. It's shoddy work from your plumbers.

Youtube has good videos on removing/replacing radiators if you work better with a visual lesson watch that from about 4.45 and you'll see him tightening the joint that's leaking. Notice he's using a second spanner on the righthand side- this is to stabalize the pipework there and stop you bending it.