Hi,
Are they baseboard heaters ( long and run against the bottom of the walls ) ?
If not describe them to me.
Thanks
Mark.
Its a radiant heat system underneath the floor in the bottom level of my house. I have baseboard heat also but my boiler has two zones setup. The rest of the house is working fine (zone1), but the radiant heat (zone2) is where I'm having the problem.
Somewhere they must have a bleeder for that loop. You will have to try to isolate the other zone and bleed this zone by itself , there should be a bleeder somewhere in the zone before it hits the floor level. Is there a drain for this zone ? Let me know if you can determine that.
Mark
Yes that is what you are looking for , basically open it up and you should get air out of it. Is the bleeder above or below the floor level ?
Take your time,
Right that would be typical.
You will have to open the spigot and force water through it. Basically let it run until you get a solid flow of water and no air out of it. Your pressure reducer should be adding water into the system as you are letting it out, you will need a bucket or get a hose over to a drain but you don't want to use a long piece of hose to do it, it just makes it harder to do.
I opened the faucet and in under a minute I got a smooth run of water. I didn't hear the pressure reducer so I added some water myself. Two problems have arrose.
1. The flow valve or return valve is making a lot of noise. It sounds like the bearing inside is rattling around. Should I have isolated the zone before opening the spigot? How can I get that noise to stop?
2. Before I read your reply, I noticed this is a slow drip from the bottom of the boiler. Will fixing the air problem aleviate this other problem or are they unrelated.
Is it a valve with wires on it ?
The drip may be a pressure problem what is your pressure at ?
There are no wires on the valve.
The pressure is around 12.
If you have a leak in the boiler ( 12 PSI is normal ) then your system will be taking on new water, when it takes on new water there is air in the water. So we can probably figure why you are getting air in your system now.
I don't know what the noise from the valve would be, any way to determine what type of valve it is ? Check valve, balance valve , hand valve , ?
photo will help.
To isolate it you need valves, I assume there is a zone valve and a shut off valve for each zone ? If not then you can't isolate it, and the installer cheapened the job up on you. Each zone should have the capability of being valved off separately.
Hi ,
Close them for all zones except the one that is not heating.
The service manual log left with the house has two separate entries where the there was leaking and the note was "put air in expansion tank." I've gotten the noise to stop by properly isolating the zone. Do you think that will stop the leak?
Probably not but its impossible to tell you for sure without seeing your piping. The boiler is going to see the same pressure that it did before you bled it so it probably has nothing to do with bleeding it.
The comments on the air tank would come from them thinking that the boiler is seeing too much pressure which I don't think is the case so I don't think doing anything with the air tank is going to help the leak. Is it leaking out of a valve or is the boiler actually leaking ?
There is a slow drip underneath the boiler. Its happened over the past few weeks and I assumed it was my fault while playing with the bolier.
A friend of mine suggested that my radiant heat wasn't working because there wasn't enough pressure. Should I ever manually insert water into the system? I think I was putting water in which may have caused the leak. By bleeding the water out and not putting in water, do you think I could've corrected the pressure?
Its possible to have corrected it if you were putting water in manually and it started leaking through the relief valve. That would make sense, but if you are at 12 PSI and it is still leaking it is a problem.
You need to determine the origin of the leak, if it is out of a valve and not the boiler itself then you probably just need to replace the valve. if its the boiler, it will most likely only get worse with time.
Journeyman Technician
UA Journeyman Pipefitter , HVAC, Refrigeration, DDC controls. 26 years.Commercial & residential
I used to see water in the pan next to the boiler that had a relief valve at the top of it. This lead is underneath the boiler. I'm guessing I should have another company make a diagnostic call to figure out what it is. Or do you think you can assess the leak online.
It would be hard to diagnose the leak form here, if it isn't the relief valve then it won't be obvious. You may want to have it serviced and it may be bad news. Hopefully its something simple but there is a possibility that the boiler itself needs a major repair to stop it.
Major Repair. They said that the cast iron has "warped" which is why it is leaking. I know this varies greatly state to state, but would would be a resonible estimate to replace a boiler?
The company who diagonised the problem said anywhere from 8K - 17K.
is this natural gas ?
What are the BTU ?
Was there anything they were replacing other than th boiler ?
For a natural gas boiler replacement this sounds like a pretty high price. I've never seen a bill for 8 thousand for a boiler replacement in residential.
Its an oil burner and they weren't planning on replacing anything else. Maybe adding a holding tank or something like that.
Jeff
Yeah, oil ups the price, I would think the lower end of your estimate is probably what you should be paying. 8,000 sounds like the right number for it. I do gas for about 5,500 for a straight change out.with an expansion tank, feed valve and necessary reconnect of piping.