Heating return issues

brooks05

Sooooo..... customer was complaining of overheating baseboards in two rooms ( first floor family room & second floor bedroom ). The system is a packaged gas boiler with 007 on return. There are 4 zones ( taco ) on the supply. 3 for heating and 1 for Weil McLain storage tank. When the customer uses the shower and there is a call for heat to the storage tank, the water returning to the boiler from tank will push up 2 of 5 return pipes ( the first and third pipes in line ) causing heat in the 2 rooms as it returns to boiler... All stats are off, no heat is passing the zone valves on the supply. The return from storage tank runs laterally and the other returns (5) drop straight down to this common return. The people moved in 12/16 and thought that these rooms seemed unusually warm but thought it was the stats and chalked it up to getting used to a new home, until now 4/28/17 and the stats are set to off... any thoughts...

Zman

You may be getting some thermal migration on the return side.
Check out this article: smartgreenbuild.com/blog/download/195/

brooks05

I thought of that. It's odd though. I understand migration to the point of least resistance, but it's only those two loops that it travels. Plus nonee of this happens on stand by. So maybe, I can't wrap my head around the fact, that when the return water is being pulled by the circulator, how can it migrate 15 and 25 feet up ? Thanks for the web site . I'll check it out.

Big Ed_4

Ghost Flow ,You have an improper return connections.. Two of the five returns should be teed back together before connecting into common return .. Four supplies and five returns ? One heat loop is split with an tee and then two returns connect separately to the common return .. Can you see the open loop from one return though that supply tee and down through the other ? Close the loop by adding the second return tee .

newagedawn

do you have zone valves, they could be bad

j a_2

Clearly from your description the installer never read the book pumping away....A few good pictures of the boiler and all associated piping will tell the story and how to remedy it....