Minimum water temp in radiators?

jeremy067390

Hi I've Google around and not found any answers so I'm asking to gurus here. I've had a thought nagging at me. Before I divided my system up into two zones and moved my thermostat, my wood stove would keep everything off and let my rads get ice cold. Even now they still get pretty cold and the system runs for a while to catch up when there's a call for heat. I set a min boiler temp (and I don't know if that's right) to try and shorten run times. But my question is is there any kind of control that would say intermittently cycle the circulator in an attempt to maintain a base temp in the radiators? Would this help with consumption by shortening run cycles? In my head it seems right but I'm not a pro and I've found that most times in life someone has usual tried things before lol. When researching I've only found info on radiant and or constant run systems. The best idea I've had was to add a aquastat to a distant rad to cycle the circulator occasionally but I'd assume if this were a real thing there would be a more how should I say, polished way of doing it. Does anyone have any ideas about this?

jeremy067390

Pardon my sloppy phone typing

JUGHNE

The simplest thing I can think of off the top the head is to put a programmable T-stat in. You could set up to 4 times a day a call for heat for maybe half hour.

Some factors to consider are what type of rads you have, (cast iron or baseboard), what controls the pump on the boiler and how close the t-stat is to the wood stove..... would be nice to wake up to a warm house if the wood doesn't make it thru the night.

Zman

Short run cycles = inefficiency. The most efficient boiler is the one that is sized perfectly to the heat loss and runs nice long cycles. Think city driving versus highway driving.

jeremy067390

Zman thank you. They are cast rads not baseboard. My furnace does run long cycles. So it's still more efficient if the rads drop all the way down to Luke warm near room temp before it fires up? what about having a low temp set on my furnace? The thermostat is far away at this point btw.

jeremy067390

Oh wow I just found out the newer side of my reverse return is connected. It's essentially a 1" copper loop. I'm sure that's killing the water flow through the rads. Unreal you can't trust anyone these days. Oh well at least I haven't been in this house long

Zman

The only potential problem you may experience is low return water temps that could potentially damage a conventional boiler. You did not mention what kind of boiler? If your boiler is ending it's cycle with return temps below 130 you may have a problem. What does the gauge read at the end of a typical cycle?