Home heating help

[IHateMyJob2004]

Bought a house 7 years ago. I always figured that the wiring was messed up. So today, I confirmed my fears. Some idiot wired everything.

This is oil fired water baseboard we are talking about.

So, zone 1 is fine. The control wires go to the controller for the oil pump (hope that is it's name) and the pump for it's zone.

Zone 2 however is wired to a controller that controls the zone 2 pump and nothing more. So, when heat is called for, the furnace will not turn on unless zone 1 is asking for heat.

I can post pictures or draw a schematic but I think the description above explains it.

What can I do (properly) to have zone 2 properly request heat from the furnace?

And yes, I might just have the oil company fix it. I'm sure they have someone that knows what to do.

In general this is not a problem. Zone 2 normally keeps up but I know that pump runs way to much.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

The zones should all be independent. In other words, each zone should be wired individually to a thermostat and it's pump.

 

[NoTine42]

I think you should have a "main loop" that circulates water through the boiler during any heat call, you then have zone valves that open onto zone 1 and/or zone 2 as they require heat.


You want an experienced HVAC pro to design the changes/corrections because you need to account for hot water expansion and flow rates.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

NoTine,
Ya, I don't know why there are not two valves and one pump.

Magnus,
Yam I have zone 1 wired to a thermostat and pump. Zone 2 is to a thermostat and pump. But only zone 1 tells the furnace to crate heat.

---
I should just take a picture. I'm avoiding doing to much now because the furnace is old and ill need replacement eventually. I don't want to find out in 2 years that I need a new furnace and can get things fixed then. I won't bring up the strange plastic pipe used for circulation in one room that I want replaced when the furnace is replaced. I pointed it out to someone and they said it was not unacceptable. Seems like a common practice I guess.

 

[NoTine42]

It may even be possible to have 3 pumps. A main and one in each zone.

Is the plastic pipe the flexible PEX tubing? That is very common in hydronic systems.

Part of me would want to hold off on upgrading the boiler. Newer systems have more complex stuff to break. I have a really old propane boiler...it needs no electricity to heat the water, (it's basically a cast iron water heater) I just need electricity to run the water circulation pump. Although I imagine an oil powered boiler uses power to "spray"? The oil into the burner?

If you now have natural gas (not propane) as an option, then I think a fuel conversion is a better reason than just, "it's old."

 

[z1ggy]

So... your zone 2 has it's own thermostat or no? You say, a "controller" for zone 2 pump, but I'm not exactly sure what that means. How would you ever intend to control zone 2 if there's no thermostat?

My house has 2 zones, as well. However, I have a thermostat for each zone, 1 pump and 2 valves. As other suggest, the pump turns on when either of the thermostats requests heat, but a "controller" as I will call it, makes either valve 1 or 2 open (or both).

TLDR; Your set up sounds abnormal, not sure how to help.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

zone 2 has a thermostat that is wired only to a pump for zone 2. If zone 1 does not ask for heat, zone 2 basically will pump luke warm water through it.

 

[z1ggy]

Gotcha. Do you still have the manual to the furnace? Look up the wiring diagram to see if there are inputs for multiple zones/pumps. Sounds like maybe there isn't since when the pump is told to turn on, it doesn't actually turn the furnace on either (hence, pumping the lukewarm water). I'm no expert, but it sounds like the pump is wired to the controller and told to turn on/off, but there isn't a signal from the thermostat to the circuit board on your furnace telling it to actually fire up when the "on" signal is given to the pump. Similarly, there could be a short somewhere, bad wiring, etc and that's all that needs to be fixed. How long has this problem gone on for?

I can't see the pictures here at work, but in a verbal explanation.. Your system has two physical lines leaving it? Each line going to its respective zone, each with it's own pump.. correct?

 

[NoTine42]

I think the OP has something like (worlds worst ascii art diagram)

-----1----
B        !
-----------------------
       !               !
       -----2-----------

B is the boiler
1 is the zone 1 pump
1 is the zone 2 pump


Zone 1 is the only think that circulates water through the boiler. Zone 2 gets zone 1 water

In a boiler situation, in home thermostats only switch a pump on/off
The boiler (like a hot water heater) only fires up when water inside the boiler gets too cold. The boiler will fire up whether or not water is circulating.

It would be technically be possible for the zone 2 thermostat to also kick on zone 1's pump, or run zone 1 for a set amount of time to get some hot water to zone 2, but actually doing that wiring is beyond my abilities right now.

A much better install would allow water to flow through the boiler for either and/or both zones. I'm guessing zone 2 was an afterthought.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Ya, zone 2 heats a 450 square foot room over the garage (on first floor). I have more than one reason to believe that this was an unfinished room when the house was built. Amongst the reasons is that the drywall work sucks compared to the rest of the house. The wiring sucks (not dangerous just done crapily). I had to update the room to have ceiling lights. There were none. The room is on one circuit. 20 amp breaker. 14 gauge wire. Ya, that breaker needs to get swapped.

But I don't even think that the room had baseboard heat when built because of how the wiring to the furnace is connected. Strangely, the pipe work looks good.

I should just take a picture of the damned thing.

 

[Booty]

Not sure if this is relevant since I don't have experience with boiler systems, but for what it's worth - I put in a new whole-house humidifier, which has it's own "controller" (humidistat). The wire that would normally go from the main thermostat directly to the furnace to kick on the fan instead goes though the humidistat first, so it reads the call for the fan/heat and then kicks on the humidifier. It also allows the humidifier to turn on the fan itself so it can run separate from the furnace if necessary.

Anyway... not sure if your thermostats and/or boiler have either a input/output type scenario or accept multiple connections, but I guess that's what I'd be looking for. NoTine seems to have a better grasp on how these systems work, and if it's truly only Zone 1 that circulates water through the boiler to be heated then maybe the system's actually set up properly? I'm still trying to understand exactly how it's plumbed and wired.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Not sure if this is relevant since I don't have experience with boiler systems, but for what it's worth - I put in a new whole-house humidifier, which has it's own "controller" (humidistat). The wire that would normally go from the main thermostat directly to the furnace to kick on the fan instead goes though the humidistat first, so it reads the call for the fan/heat and then kicks on the humidifier. It also allows the humidifier to turn on the fan itself so it can run separate from the furnace if necessary.

Anyway... not sure if your thermostats and/or boiler have either a input/output type scenario or accept multiple connections, but I guess that's what I'd be looking for. NoTine seems to have a better grasp on how these systems work, and if it's truly only Zone 1 that circulates water through the boiler to be heated then maybe the system's actually set up properly? I'm still trying to understand exactly how it's plumbed and wired.

Ya, I need something along those lines.

 

[richardycc]

are you mistakenly calling the zone valve the pump? you don't need 1 pump per zone, I have 3 zones and only 1 circulator pump for all 3 zones and 1 pump for hot water. If an idiot did install 2 pumps with no zone valves, all you have to do is move one of the pump to the main output line, replace the 2 pumps with 2 zone valves, and maybe a new 2 Zones ZVC like Taco ZVC403.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

are you mistakenly calling the zone valve the pump? you don't need 1 pump per zone, I have 3 zones and only 1 circulator pump for all 3 zones and 1 pump for hot water. If an idiot did install 2 pumps with no zone valves, all you have to do is move one of the pump to the main output line, replace the 2 pumps with 2 zone valves, and maybe a new 2 Zones ZVC like Taco ZVC403.

I have 2 pumps. I've seen this before. I wouldn't call it uncommon. In some ways I would prefer it so that there is not a single point of failure for the whole house.

 

[richardycc]

I guess one can use the pump as a poor man zone valve. This is basically how your system is set up.

more pumps = more things to failure. your boiler will need more maintenance and service calls than the pumps. if you are worry about single point of failure, shouldn't you have 2 boilers then? Those pumps last a long time, just have a spare handy. It cost about $6 to run each pump for 6hrs/day per month, something to think about.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

At some point, I need to have someone come do a minor overhaul of my system. The wiring needs fixing and the one room with the plastic pipe needs to go. And I want to put this in next to some windows that have no heat source near them:
http://www.slantfin.com/index.php/products/baseboard-residential/hydronic-floor-box