Noisy hot water baseboards

Jim R.

We have a Buderus gas boiler and hot water baseboard heat (slant-fin). It's a one story house and all the rooms are on the same zone. The HEAT works very well but we could do without the NOISE.

Tick, tick, bang! whenever the heat is on. It wakes up the kids. Our 4 year old thinks there is a monster in the wall. It is LOUD and not just background white noise.

When there is a call for heat, the circulator pump turns on at the same time as the boiler (moving cold water). After a few minutes the ticking starts then louder banging as the temperature goes up. The loudest noises are from the wall where there is no baseboard, probably a pipe passing through. I was pointed to an expansion coupling called HYDRO-TITE but apparently it's no longer produced. Is there any replacement?

I'm going to put in plastic spacers where the baseboards are cracking and banging. Is it worthwhile to buy the official spacers or just squeeze in some cut pieces from a hard plastic bottle?

Two other questions while I have the heating experts here:

1. The boiler has an automatic air bleeder (Honeywell Supervent). Should I need to bleed the baseboards if I have this? There is at least one bleeder valve on the baseboard but I never touched it.

2. Is it common for large portions of the baseboard heat system to have no fins? Roughly half of our dining room has a copper pipe passing through a baseboard heater but no fins on the copper. The heat in the room is fine but this seems odd.

Thanks!

Rich_49

Those fins were probably removed or are what we call dummy baseboard .more than likely purposeful .

The noise is more than likely being made worse by poorly or improperly strapped piping in the walls and below the floors , along with the expansion against the cradles that the fin rests on within the cabinet .

You could try some type of material between the supports and the elements and then do more as you identify areas where noise still exist . Make sure whatever you use does not smell bad or deteriorate when it heats up

SWEI

Which Buderus? Do you have the Logamatic control?

hot_rod

I think Kurt is headed towards running the system on outdoor reset control. With reset the water temperature varies according to outdoor temperature. It helps eliminates wide temperature swings and could lessen the on/ off cycling of the system.

Ideally it would be a constant circulation system with very little temperature swings. ODR is one of the best way to limit thermal expansion noise, if insulating pipes is no longer an option.

On long runs of copper tube or element, the pipe needs to be able to arc upward when it expands if both ends are held tight, make sure the tube can move and that the plastic cradles are around the fin tube where it sits on the supports.

I'll bet you could find those SlantFin expansion couplings online? or on E-bay.

Jim R.

Thanks guys.

I have a Buderus but no Logmatic. It was a $500 option when I got the system but decided against it. Now, for various reasons, ODR seems to come up every few years and the price has almost tripled and I'm kicking myself.

We have a DHW priority plus the baseboard loop. I wasn't convinced that ODR was going to save money so I never got it. My wife is a stay a home mom and keeps the same temp all day and we manually reduce it at night (old Honeywell style). The heating / cooling "just works" and we were leary about putting in automatic controls with setbacks/pickups/etc that might not work as well (and I know that happens!).

So how does constant circulation work? Seems like a lot of time pumping cooler water with lots of short cycles for the boiler. What about times when we're not home and set the temp down-- it still pumps?

I will look into ODR again. We are thinking about adding another zone in our basement and that may be the time to do it.

Regarding the noisy baseboard radiator... tested it this weekend (80 deg outside) and it was mostly quiet. Maybe it's only noisy with large temperature swings? Our basement is mostly uninsulated and the heating pipes see a big temperature change in the winter... probably from 60 to 180 pretty quickly.

Jim R.

With the Logmatic, I remember the salesman saying that it would save money BUT if your schedule deviated from the program you'd have to go into the basement and override something just to take a shower. That would be an extreme case but it was definitely one extra thing that we would have to learn how to use. So we stuck with the honeywell dial... simple.

hot_rod

I'm not a Buderus pro, b ut I think you could add an aftermarket ODR control from tekmar or HBX, without a boiler control changeout.

What the ODR does is provide a cruise control for the boiler, it supplies only the temperature required for the conditions. It helps eliminate boiler cycling and limits wide temperature swings which can cause copper expansion noises.

Bob Bona_4

When your DHW calls, the Logo will abandon the ODR for the duration. The bb will behave differently on ODR, you will see longer stretches of warm bb where you were accustomed to hot hot hot. Some folks can't accept that nature of the beast due to age old expectations. But it's working towards your advantage.