If you intend to fit a brand new radiator and want to save money, it is fine to reuse the older valves and tails for the pipework, however if you need to remove the tails to do the job, a radiator spanner should suffice to undo them. A Regents Park Plumber is an expert on radiator valve removal. There are now adjustable telescopic tails to do the job if you wish. Another idea is leaving the radiator on all the time, without a TRV, and keeps the circuit open. The usual one is the bathroom radiator or maybe the towel rail. It is a good idea not to fit a TRV in a room that remains hot. Todays radiators are fitted with a lock shield and a TRV valve. The TRV is used to thermostatically control the heat of the radiator. The lock-shield valve on the other hand, are to balance each radiator when the central heating system is first installed. Regents Park Plumbers only use qualified tradespeople. They give a resistance to water in the radiator and as such make sure that all the radiators in the house get hot, instead of a couple of the radiators becoming very hot while the others on the circuit remain warm or even cold. Whilst considering this, and just so you know, the lock-shield valves are covered normally by a white capped dome to make sure that the setting of the lockshield is not altered by mistake. If there is a time when you need to close the lock shield, for example, a new radiator, it is really quite critical that whoever takes the valve off make a note of how many turns it takes to turn the valve off, so that when the valve is refitted, the same number of turns can be used to open it and this keeps the radiator circuit in balance.