This looks like a great place frequented by a lot of knowledgeable folks. I'm hoping you will be so kind as to help me solve a problem or two that we are having with our heating system. We purchased this house just over a year ago (December 2015). It has a radiant heating setup that (I think) may have been put together in a somewhat atypical manner. I have a shared album with pictures of the setup here. We are experiencing a couple of issues and numerous questions.
My most obvious problems in a nutshell:
Some heating zones are not functioning properly.
Zone 6 (top pump in the setup) does not appear to circulate hot water. After running for a while, the pump will feel hot to the touch, along with the first several inches of the copper pipe coming out of the pump, but the rest of the pipe never gets hot.
Zone 4 circulates hot water if it is there, but hot water does not get there if it is the only zone calling for heat. It can run all night with the thermostat set for 70 degrees (or whatever) and the room temp at, say, 60 degrees, and if it is the only zone calling for heat during that time, the tubes never heat up, even though water is circulating. If other zones are calling for heat and circulating, hot water circulates through all zones (including Zone 4) and the tubes heat up.
Zone 4 is my most urgent problem, as this is the heat for our master bedroom. Zone 6 heats rooms that are seldom utilized.
Some quick and perhaps relevant facts that I know:
House was built and system installed in 2004/2005.
House is 2 stories, plus basement. The boiler is in the basement.
The boiler is fueled by home heating oil; it provides domestic hot water and radiant heat hot water.
No heating issues were observed during the first winter when we moved in. It may have been working fine, or it may not have been as cold as this winter, and/or we had too much going on with settling in to pay close enough attention.
The system has 6 independent zones, each fed by it's own circulation pump.
Each zone has a RiteTemp thermostat (I think an 8022C) control
Each thermostat is wired in through a SP-30 SetPoint Temperature Control.
The interior walls of the house are insulated, so turning off certain zones and shutting doors to rooms that are not used appears to be pretty effective.
The boiler heats the output water up to approximately 190 degrees F; it kicks on when that temperature drops to approximately 150 (although the temp is as low as 135 before it starts going up again) and kicks off when the temp is around 180 (but gauge continues drifting up to near 190).
The pressure seems to be between roughly 11psi (lowest observed boiler temp) and 14psi (highest observed boiler temp).
Each zone has multiple sub-loops that can be manually throttled or turned off using a quarter-turn valve.
When water is circulating, moving the big lever on the 4-way-mixing-valve (?) changes the input loop temp dramatically...from no increase up to 170+. Except when only Zone 4 is circulating, then "turning up" the lever has little effect.
Last spring, after shutting all thermostats off, I noticed the tubes in the top zones would be warm, even though no pumps were running. To solve this, I ended up shutting the valves before the pumps and the valve in the return line until we were ready to use heat again.
Pictures show the setup in the boiler room from multiple angles, including the details of the boiler and closer pictures of some of the system components.
Please let me know if you have any thoughts on the system, or especially how to solve the stated problems. I also have some other questions about the system, but this post is long enough for now!
Thanks!