contol of hydronic baseboard system

Tom Hopkins

As you have discovered, the problem certainly isn't the thermostat. Please get a hot water heating professional who can analyze the system! It will save a lot of money and headache in the long run.

Robert Schertzer

control of baseboard hydronic system (Heating)

MY INITIAL PRECONCEPTION and original assumption had been that whenever there was some kind of mechanical failure or operational malfunction inside the hydronic hot water baseboard radiant heating system, the flow of the hot water heat in the baseboard pipes would be interrupted and impeded. I had assumed that should a glitch of any kind (like a defective wall thermostat) occur in the hot water baseboard heating system of this multi-family one-bedroom residential rental property, the hot water heat flow would falter, cease and stop. Simply stated, the interior room temperature would drop and decline whenever any kind of mechanical glitch should unfortunately occur and take place within the hot water baseboard heating
operation.
However, west of the Hudson River (particularly in remote regions west of the Delaware River), precisely the opposite phenomenon occurs every Winter. For the last dozen winters, most specifically in the one-bedroom rental apartments on the 2nd floor, the occupants swelter in unrelenting and continuous heat being emitted and disseminated by the hot water baseboard heating pipes. The apt wall thermostats are all set at 65F for the desired heat, but the interior room temperature remains in excess of 80F. Tenants seek to turn down their intense heat and, despite lowering the thermostat setting, the heat persists inflowing out of the baseboard fins. Maintenance has replaced numerous wall thermostats and also at least one dozen baseboard zone valves but the persistent stifling and unrelenting heat continues to flow out of the baseboard pipe. It is fairly common for these sweltering occupants to open their apartment windows on those most bitter, frigid, blustery January nights when the outdoor wind chills are registering well below zero degrees and the Weather Service is announcing cold weather advisories etc. Heat persists to be emitted from the baseboards due to the failure of some essential internal component of the hydronic hot water heating system. For the 2nd floor tenants in particular, instead of cooler and chilly conditions inside their rental apartments, the temperatures persist to remain over 80F.
My initial and original expectations of what happens when hot water baseboard heating system internal components fail and malfunction have been totally discarded by the reality of one-bedroom rental apartments with tropical interior temperatures. For perhaps the last several winters, most of the 2nd floor rental units, all one-bedroom, have experienced intense torrid temperatures while the rest of America shivers in those harsh brutal blustery Arctic winds of February.
It would appear that perhaps the insidious failure of 3 or 4 simple fuses within the recondite electrical power supply devices can result in the most perplexing, confounding, disconcerting and bizarre conditions within the hydronic hot water baseboard heating operations of multi-family rental apartment properties.

Unknown

I recommend

you hire a heating professional to investigate how your system is set up. It sounds like something may be wrong with the piping system into the second floors. It is very difficult to answer beyond that here on the Wall without seeing the system. Properly setup hydronic heating can be very comfortable and does not typically have intense overrides that you are mentioning.

Terry Trommeshauser

here are some possibilities;
they are changing t'stats... but are they matched to the zone valve??
i.e. normally open vs. normally closed.
(try cranking t'stat all the way UP. if the flow stops, wrong t'stat)

or perhaps differential pressure across zone valve too high? (some ZV's will bypass if DP too high)

hope this helps!