Fixed it - Ground level 1 zone gets smoking hot, 1 gets warmish after a day, 1 is dead stick

jwoodyu

Ground level 1 zone gets smoking hot, 1 gets warmish after a day, 1 is dead stick, 1 (garage) is disabled cutoff on the supply side and stat removed due to a leak, basement stat or zone valve is bad but there is plenty of spurious heat from the hot water heater, boiler etc and we don't live down there.

I had an Amtrol 30 that seemed waterlogged. Checked the pressure got only water, change it, bled by cutting off the returns, cracking the inline hose bibs for each starting the basement zone, no air, 3 active zones on the ground floor got a little air from the one that gets hot, a lot of air from the other two.

Fired it back up same issue. Zone valves appear to be opening. When i energize the system the little motors turn and springs stretch out on the cold zones.

JUGHNE

What kind of emitters do you have, baseboard, infloor tubing or radiators?
What pressure shows on the gauge?

jwoodyu

baseboard no bleeders on them 19 on the pressure. I moved the two zone valves to manual one of them started to heat the other did not. The motors are turning and stretching the springs on both.

JUGHNE

Are you sure the pump(s) are running in all cases?
FYI, the manual lever on some zone valve may not start the pump relay or boiler.
Could some valves been left off whenever the leaking section was isolated?
Or the disconnected T-stat have disabled the pump function of wanted zones.

After that it is back to air purging.
A hose in a bucket of water will let you see air coming out with what looks to be a solid stream of water.

jwoodyu

I have only one pump and it is confirmed running. I suspect my zone valves do start the pump/boiler only because the one that I have in manual has that area of the house 75 where the one good zone is set and holding at 68. Presumably I can disconnect the wire from the end switch on the zone valve that is set to manual and just allow it to get heat when another zone calls for pump/boiler?

So here is a follow-up question. Can zone valves fail in such a way as to appear to be opening by stretching the spring etc but not actually turning the valve inside? If the mechanical part of the valve has failed can I take the guts and power head from a new valve and transfer it onto the old housing? The reason I ask is the changing the whole thing looks like it is going to be a real PTA. There is a 90 that comes off my manifold and straight into my zone valves then a 90 returning sending the pipe vertical again. I would like to limp through this season and then take my time planning and reworking the system before next year moving zone valves, adding cut offs above and below zone valves and bleeder bibs etc.

I returned to bleeding into a bucket on the cold zone. Now the cutoff for the zone is leaking round the handle. I am going to have to shut down, cut the supply, rebuild valve with new gaskets and then bleed that thing again from scratch

Thanks very much for indulging all the questions.

jwoodyu

So i kept purging the trouble zone today and after a solid 35 or 40 gallons of purging, rather slowly compared to the flow on other lines the whole system got very animated. I have had the pipes bang before with air but this sounded like the Titanic giving out it's last death grown before going down. The autofill valve opened wide open 30 seconds into the banging and I jumped to see what the pressure was running. It blew two tremendous bubbles at the end and quickly stopped bubbling altogether. Closed it up flipped it back on viola everything is working perfectly zone valves and all. JUGHNE, I can't thank you enough for sending me back to down there to purge some more.