Zone valves and volume

rick in Alaska

Sounds to me like the heating system is doing what it needs to do. If the boiler is running, (burner burning) , and not shutting down until the temperature is reached, then it is putting out all it can, as been said.Those big radiators will take a long time to heat up, but once they get there, they will take a long time to cool off. If you can keep your thermostats at the same temperature with out any setback, you should notice decent fuel bills.
And without looking at the label on the tubing, it is hard to tell if it is oxygen barrier tubing or not. I know I can buy Rehau brand tubing in red/blue that is barrier tubing.
Rick

Canucker

larryjbjr said:

bob said:

Take the trap off and throw it. You must have a way to get the air out of the radiator.

Ok, I'll do that.

That's why I have the inlet on the bottom and the outlet on the top, to bleed the air out. What I did when I first turned it on, was disconnect the return and stick it out the window, then once the air was out I connected it up.

@larryjbjr The rads you connected on both bottom connections will heat reasonably well(Maybe, depends on your flow rate) but if you supplied the rad in the bottom and it exits out the highest connection, you will definitely lower its ability to heat as it will be pulling the hot water out that wants to go to the highest portion of the rad. The right way to get rid of air in the rad would be to install a bleeder valve at the radiators highest point. Any other bits of air in the system will dissolve into the water and be released when it reaches the auto venting that's installed in the system(air scoop, spirovent, etc.)

larryjbjr

Gordy said:

That blue pex is NOT O2 barrier pex. is the rest of the pex barrier pex?

No, it is not OS barrier. I plan to switch that out soon as I can afford to

In your case you have a lot of mass in the rads, probably a less efficient r valued envelope, and trying to bump up 2 degrees from set point. Tighten up the thermostat setting to .5 to 1 degree differential from desired set point. Then see how long the boiler runs to hit set point.

What is r valued envelope?

I did switch to 1 degree and it seems to be doing just fine.

Right now you say it took 1 hour to gain 2 degrees.
However how long to the next call to satisfy the t stat? 2 hours 3?

Actually, I timed it yesterday and it shut off around 4ish, and as far as I noticed it did not turn on again till after 9, so that's like 5 hours. So, I think I'm gonna leave it for now.

larryjbjr

I think at this point I think I should just return this behemoth of an over sized pump. I have it cranked down to lowest setting right now and it is running the best it has in a while. But, I could've paid a third of the price to get one that does that. I purchased it based upon what they told me at menards, so I think I should have no trouble returning it since they sold me the wrong pump.

I figured that my longest run is less than 10 feet of head loss (or whatever it's called) So, I know what I need for head. But, what about gpm? I figure I only need about 1 gpm for the baseboard heaters, and 3 gpm for the kick space heaters, but how do I calculate the radiators? I'm thinking about 2 or 3 gpm... And, do I take all my emitters gpm and add that up to get total gpm?