no heat in the upstairs, plenty downstairs

jeff r

Ok, to make a long story short, I had a plumber in to finish some work on my system (I had my kitchen remodeled, and we had to re-route some pipe on the ground floor. These were bare copper pipes). He replaced the bare copper pipe with the heaters (finned copper pipes). Shortly afterwards, my wife noticed that in the morning, we didn't have heat upstairs.

Basics of the system: We have a boiler which circulates hot water thru baseboard copper pipes to provide heat to the house. Coming out of the boiler, the main line coming out very quickly branches into 3 lines.

1) very short run to a basement radiator, gets hot quickly

2) the run to the downstairs (which is above the level of the boiler in the basement. After the boiler heats up, both the pipe running from the boiler and the return get hot very quickly.

3) the run to the upstairs. The pipe leading away from the boiler gets hot, but i don't think that it get quite as hot as the downstairs one, but still quite hot. The return, however, stays quite cool.

I have a booster pump (I guess on the return side, Little Red 1/20th HP), that comes on when the boiler gets to temp.

Anyway, another plumber from the same company came in, and the first thing he noticed was that the water pressure was low, and the water inlet to the boiler was closed off. We opened the valve to the boiler, but to no good effect, though the pressure came right up to normal. We also tried several times to drain the upper line, also without good result.

Here are another couple of details. There are no bleeder valves on the upper floor, so we attempted to drain the upper floor run (if I'm using that term correctly) by a spigot on the return side of the system a few feet from the boiler. When we drained that part of the system, I got hot water almost immediately out, almost as though it was coursing backwards from the system. I never felt more than lukewarm water from closer to the upstairs return.

The second plumber thinks that it's possible that the booster pump isn't working well enough to pull the water from the upper run back to the boiler. I don't know, though.

Anyway, any suggestions would be appreciated, if I should be trying another way to drain the system or fully diagnose the problem, I'm open to help. I sometimes believe in coincidences, but I'd like to believe that the pump didn't stop working at exactly the time that work was being done.

Weezbo

Jeff, i have minus 8 F return fluid from one of my heating loops

right now....

it is because it is cold:)

have you considered closing the boiler valve on the return and adding some water to the upstairs zone?

if you keep the other zones turned off during the process it might make it thru the system ...purging the upper floor might be a good idea at that time...

Back flushing a zone works wonders sometimes.. give that a try. use a hose off the water heater or shop sink...Keep an aye on the return pressure...28 is plenty...then open the other zones and let it equalize ,...instead of turning on the boiler , just run the circ pump...that way you can hear flow or air...as a thought...you have a air bleeder of some sort on the boiler?....might open that while the circ was running...

Brad White_9

I suspect

air binding and a good purge should take care of that. Do re-check the pressure to see if the water is making it's way to the second floor. That is the first thing I would check when you have bi-level "heating".

Air vents are always handy though. Purging is not for the squeemish, nor cats.

jeff r

Thanks for the thoughts. How would be the best way to purge the system? Should I drain it entirely, and then start fresh? What the plumber and I did was just attempt to purge the top run (using the drain valve just on the upstairs run). All of this is connected, of course. As the main pipe leaves the boiler, there is one pipe that divides quickly into 3, and as the pipes return to the boiler, they join up again just as they enter the booster pump.

In order to control for another variable what I did a short while ago was to shut off the lower run (which did have heat running through it correctly), and left the other top floor run open. Then I fired up the boiler, and the water leaving the boiler got very hot, but still did not complete the circuit. I then once again tried to drain just the top run, and got some hot water(which i think was back flowing from the booster pump), and then just cold water. Would this lead us to believe that I still have air in the system, or that coincidently the pump has sort of failed at the same time?