Are my zone control boards dying?

Superfireconvoy

I am new to hydronic radiant heat with my home and looking to see if I am in need of a new zone control board. 

My current set up:

Weil McLain P-WGO-4 Boiler

5x Taco Cartridge Circulator valves (DHW and 4 zones)

2x Erie Controls SRL300 control boards (each board is only set up for 3 zones)

2 wire thermostats x4

DHW, Basement, and Living room zones on control board 1

Master bedroom and guest room zones on control board 2

priority is not set for DHW and both boards are set to master and neither is slaved to the other

Situation seems to be that the boards are intermittent in operation depending on the zone. Only one zone (basement) seems to be consistently activating the system when thermostat is calling for heat (I.E. lights up board -> opens valve or starts boiler). The other zones and water heater may or may not actuate the board when the thermostat calls for heat. I have also tried bypassing thermostat and simply connecting the RW wires with the same results (no lights and no action on the zone control boards). Sometimes, the zone control board will activate for a short amount of time but not enough to raise the temperature of the zone to the thermostat set temp. 

Interesting thing happened tonight where DHW and living room were calling for heat but control board was not lighting up and activating the system. When I upped the set temp on basement thermostat, the system started for and kept running for the DHW (I.E. zone board lit up, boiler ran, and DHW tank showed increase in temperature) until it hit the set point even when I turned the basement thermostat set point below ambient temp. The living room zone ran for 5 minutes and shut off before it met the thermostat set point.  

It doesn’t look like the Song Chuan relays are bad and the zones all seem to intermittently work. Testing with multimeter gives me solid 24v at thermostats. Testing with multimeter at board isn’t indicating any issues either. I have tried resetting the boards by shutting off the breaker to the boards, waiting 5 minutes, and restarting to no avail. 

I think I may need new boards as these seem to have been discontinued and likely were original to the house (21 years). Is there something I am missing here? Is there anything else I can try?

Thanks in advance for any help and looking forward to being a part of the community!

HVACNUT

Is the problem with just the one board or is the MBR and guest board intermittent as well?
Seems odd that both would fail at the same time. 

Superfireconvoy

The guest BR seems to actuate the board 80% of the time and the Master is probably 50% or less. 

So I am having intermittent operation on both boards. 

One more note is that the living room used to be on the same board as the guest BR and MBR and the relay was buzzing VERY loudly whenever it would get a call for heat so I moved it to the other board with the DHW and basement. It was intermittent at that location so I hoped moving it would fix both issues. It only fixed the buzzing.

Another note is that both basement and guest BR are set to zone 2 on each respective board.

bburd

What make and model are your two wire thermostats?

HVACNUT

Shut off power.
Tighten all screws, check all low volt connections at the thermostats and the boards. (Do those tabs lock at the thermostat terminals?) Remove and re seat all cube relays. Remove and check fuses. I don't see a wired ground so tighten the locknuts on the B/X  connectors, check and verify ground from the relay box to a cold water pipe or known ground. 

Superfireconvoy

I had 3 of the heat only Honeywell mechanical/mercury thermostats in all the zones except for the living room which had a Honeywell RTH230 programmable. I switched to the Nest and ran 24v plug in transformers to each thermostat for power.

The issue existed prior to my change over to the Nest and occurs even when I remove thermostats and connect the red and white wires to call for heat. The issue also is occurring with the DHW zone. I have the set point at 115 and the temp of the tank will dip to 90 or 85 and the board will not activate/fire the boiler. The differential is set to 10 degrees. 

The Nests do give me an idea of the days and lengths of time that it is not working. Yesterday, the living room thermostat called for heat for 15 hours straight. The set point was at 67 and the ambient room temperature was around 62. 

Jon_blaney

Check the voltages to and from the boards.

STEVEusaPA

Stranded wire in the MC?

Zman

Do you have a multimeter? My money is on a flaky neutral.

pecmsg

Superfireconvoy said:

I am new to hydronic radiant heat with my home and looking to see if I am in need of a new zone control board. 

My current set up:

Weil McLain P-WGO-4 Boiler

5x Taco Cartridge Circulator valves (DHW and 4 zones)

2x Erie Controls SRL300 control boards (each board is only set up for 3 zones)

2 wire thermostats x4

DHW, Basement, and Living room zones on control board 1

Master bedroom and guest room zones on control board 2

priority is not set for DHW and both boards are set to master and neither is slaved to the other

Situation seems to be that the boards are intermittent in operation depending on the zone. Only one zone (basement) seems to be consistently activating the system when thermostat is calling for heat (I.E. lights up board -> opens valve or starts boiler). The other zones and water heater may or may not actuate the board when the thermostat calls for heat. I have also tried bypassing thermostat and simply connecting the RW wires with the same results (no lights and no action on the zone control boards). Sometimes, the zone control board will activate for a short amount of time but not enough to raise the temperature of the zone to the thermostat set temp. 

Interesting thing happened tonight where DHW and living room were calling for heat but control board was not lighting up and activating the system. When I upped the set temp on basement thermostat, the system started for and kept running for the DHW (I.E. zone board lit up, boiler ran, and DHW tank showed increase in temperature) until it hit the set point even when I turned the basement thermostat set point below ambient temp. The living room zone ran for 5 minutes and shut off before it met the thermostat set point.  

It doesn’t look like the Song Chuan relays are bad and the zones all seem to intermittently work. Testing with multimeter gives me solid 24v at thermostats. Testing with multimeter at board isn’t indicating any issues either. I have tried resetting the boards by shutting off the breaker to the boards, waiting 5 minutes, and restarting to no avail. 

I think I may need new boards as these seem to have been discontinued and likely were original to the house (21 years). Is there something I am missing here? Is there anything else I can try?

Thanks in advance for any help and looking forward to being a part of the community!

What size low voltage cable is that. Looks like 22gauge phone wire.

Zman

What size low voltage cable is that. Looks like 22gauge phone wire.

Good point, if you jump the t-stat terminals on the controller does the problem go away?

Superfireconvoy

Jon_blaney said:

Check the voltages to and from the boards.

I checked with multimeter previously and the voltage from the board was 23/24v, sometimes it would continuously drop to 10, spike back to 23 and drop again.

I checked the other intermittent zones today (MBR, guest BR, and DHW) it is doing the drop, spike, drop.

I checked today and living room is reading 0 at the board.

Superfireconvoy

STEVEusaPA said:

Stranded wire in the MC?

I’m sorry, I am not understanding the question. Are you asking if the wire into the board is stranded?

Superfireconvoy

HVACNUT said:

Shut off power.
Tighten all screws, check all low volt connections at the thermostats and the boards. (Do those tabs lock at the thermostat terminals?) Remove and re seat all cube relays. Remove and check fuses. I don't see a wired ground so tighten the locknuts on the B/X  connectors, check and verify ground from the relay box to a cold water pipe or known ground. 

Ran through all of these per your instruction. The thermostat connections have locking tabs that depress when the wires are inserted all the way. The only thing I didn’t see was a ground from the relay box per the picture below:

Superfireconvoy

Zman said:
What size low voltage cable is that. Looks like 22gauge phone wire. Good point, if you jump the t-stat terminals on the controller does the problem go away?  

I jumped at the controller for the living room and it does not work. I’ll try the MBR later when it stops working again.

The MBR zone was not running all morning and then I turned up the set temp in the guest bedroom just now and then MBR started running 10 minutes after the guest BR started running. It seems to be normal for the moment. 

I wire nutted 18ga thermostat wire to the 22ga wire to ensure good fit in the connectors. 

Superfireconvoy

pecmsg said:

I am new to hydronic radiant heat with my home and looking to see if I am in need of a new zone control board. 

My current set up:

Weil McLain P-WGO-4 Boiler

5x Taco Cartridge Circulator valves (DHW and 4 zones)

2x Erie Controls SRL300 control boards (each board is only set up for 3 zones)

2 wire thermostats x4

DHW, Basement, and Living room zones on control board 1

Master bedroom and guest room zones on control board 2

priority is not set for DHW and both boards are set to master and neither is slaved to the other

Situation seems to be that the boards are intermittent in operation depending on the zone. Only one zone (basement) seems to be consistently activating the system when thermostat is calling for heat (I.E. lights up board -> opens valve or starts boiler). The other zones and water heater may or may not actuate the board when the thermostat calls for heat. I have also tried bypassing thermostat and simply connecting the RW wires with the same results (no lights and no action on the zone control boards). Sometimes, the zone control board will activate for a short amount of time but not enough to raise the temperature of the zone to the thermostat set temp. 

Interesting thing happened tonight where DHW and living room were calling for heat but control board was not lighting up and activating the system. When I upped the set temp on basement thermostat, the system started for and kept running for the DHW (I.E. zone board lit up, boiler ran, and DHW tank showed increase in temperature) until it hit the set point even when I turned the basement thermostat set point below ambient temp. The living room zone ran for 5 minutes and shut off before it met the thermostat set point.  

It doesn’t look like the Song Chuan relays are bad and the zones all seem to intermittently work. Testing with multimeter gives me solid 24v at thermostats. Testing with multimeter at board isn’t indicating any issues either. I have tried resetting the boards by shutting off the breaker to the boards, waiting 5 minutes, and restarting to no avail. 

I think I may need new boards as these seem to have been discontinued and likely were original to the house (21 years). Is there something I am missing here? Is there anything else I can try?

Thanks in advance for any help and looking forward to being a part of the community!

What size low voltage cable is that. Looks like 22gauge phone wire.

The 22ga wire is run as a single cable to just below where the t stat wire is wire nutted to each zone and run upstairs to each zone:

This is the cable that is run to that split above: 

Superfireconvoy

Since my first post today at 1:14pm EST, I have upped the set point on the 2 zones that I know work on each board. The intermittent zones have started except for the living room. 

Now, the living room is lit up on the control board at 1:41pm EST and opened the valve. Previously, I tried jumping at the control board and it would not work. It also read 0 on the multimeter per my previous post.

Jon_blaney

I think you have answered your own question. Intermittent operation, inconsistent voltages. I would be at the supply house when they opened in the morning. How old are those control anyway?

Superfireconvoy

Jon_blaney said:

I think you have answered your own question. Intermittent operation, inconsistent voltages. I would be at the supply house when they opened in the morning. How old are those control anyway?

Thanks, I just wanted to make sure that my inclination was correct. I had an HVAC guy out and he couldn’t offer anything other than swapping zones around on the boards.

The control boards are likely original to the house which is 21 years old. I thought the relays might be going and looked to replace them and they were discontinued 8 years ago.

Any specific limitations for getting a new board with my boiler and set up? Could I just get a TACO 6 zone board? Or is Honeywell better? 

EBEBRATT-Ed

@Superfireconvoy

Taco seems to be the most popular. Ditch the 22 gauge wire while you at it

pecmsg

Superfireconvoy said:

Since my first post today at 1:14pm EST, I have upped the set point on the 2 zones that I know work on each board. The intermittent zones have started except for the living room. 

Now, the living room is lit up on the control board at 1:41pm EST and opened the valve. Previously, I tried jumping at the control board and it would not work. It also read 0 on the multimeter per my previous post.

Zero means the switch is Closed

EBEBRATT-Ed

As far as undersized wire goes, I had a old Bristol 15 ton 2 speed compressor back in the day that we replaced. Two weeks later the new one failed.

There was #14 gauge control wire leaving the unit in conduit. When it got in the building the owners "automation guy"spliced the #14s to #22 phone wire and ran that over to his new panel.

Of course when we replaced the compressor it worked fine. Two speed compressors have 3 contactors. high speed ..low speed and the ty contactor.On one of the speeds (can't remember if it was high or low) it has to pull in two of those. So the 22 gauge and the voltage drop chattered the contactors and burned the compressor.

Superfireconvoy

pecmsg said:

Superfireconvoy said:

Since my first post today at 1:14pm EST, I have upped the set point on the 2 zones that I know work on each board. The intermittent zones have started except for the living room. 

Now, the living room is lit up on the control board at 1:41pm EST and opened the valve. Previously, I tried jumping at the control board and it would not work. It also read 0 on the multimeter per my previous post.

Zero means the switch is C

C?

Superfireconvoy

EBEBRATT-Ed said:

As far as undersized wire goes, I had a old Bristol 15 ton 2 speed compressor back in the day that we replaced. Two weeks later the new one failed. There was #14 gauge control wire leaving the unit in conduit. When it got in the building the owners "automation guy"spliced the #14s to #22 phone wire and ran that over to his new panel. Of course when we replaced the compressor it worked fine. Two speed compressors have 3 contactors. high speed ..low speed and the ty contactor.On one of the speeds (can't remember if it was high or low) it has to pull in two of those. So the 22 gauge and the voltage drop chattered the contactors and burned the compressor.

I spliced the 22 gauge to 18 gauge going to the contactors. I could definitely ditch the 22 gauge as it’s run above the drop ceiling in my basement so I can run new 18/8 cable easily. 

pecmsg

Superfireconvoy said:

pecmsg said:

Superfireconvoy said:

Since my first post today at 1:14pm EST, I have upped the set point on the 2 zones that I know work on each board. The intermittent zones have started except for the living room. 

Now, the living room is lit up on the control board at 1:41pm EST and opened the valve. Previously, I tried jumping at the control board and it would not work. It also read 0 on the multimeter per my previous post.

Zero means the switch is C

C?

CLOSED!

Superfireconvoy

pecmsg said:

pecmsg said:

Superfireconvoy said:

Since my first post today at 1:14pm EST, I have upped the set point on the 2 zones that I know work on each board. The intermittent zones have started except for the living room. 

Now, the living room is lit up on the control board at 1:41pm EST and opened the valve. Previously, I tried jumping at the control board and it would not work. It also read 0 on the multimeter per my previous post.

Zero means the switch is C

C?

CLOSED!

Thanks for the clarification.

Superfireconvoy

So I got a TACO 6 zone SR board to replace my Erie Control Boards. Going from 2 boards to 1, I now have an extra 120 V supply cable. What do I do with it? Can I just put a cable nut on each the neutral and hot and tape each up?

Superfireconvoy

Here is a picture of the new board