No heat downstairs

Buckeye01

Can’t figure this out. No valves, but hot water is going right past the downstairs loop and flowing upstairs just fine. 

Buckeye01

Kinda hard to get a good pic of this screwed up situation but I have no heat on the ground floor(where boiler is) upstairs works great. Only have one thermostat which is downstairs so now the boiler is running running running and the upstairs gets screaming hot and downstairs ice cold. Ive tried ground floor loop but can’t seem to get it to work. I don’t have any zone valves that I can see. Please offer some advice. I even tried bleeding the baseboards and got hot water to them and the supply and return line for the ground floor got hot but didn’t stay hot. Only one circulating pump for both floors and it seems to be working fine since water is flowing upstairs.oor 

Jamie Hall

Are there any handy valves which you could use to throttle the flow to the upstairs radiators down? Remember that water is lazy -- and it may be the resistance to flow in the downstairs is sufficient to direct most of the water upstairs. For that matter, are there any valves on the downstairs line which might be partly closed?

Buckeye01

Everything downstairs seems to be open. The only valve i have involving the upstairs is on the return. Would this do the trick?

HVACNUT

What's the pressure on the boiler?
If the feed valve open?
Is the first floor on a concrete slab? Possible leak.
Can you see your water meter? Is it counting with all appliances off?
There's a (weird) purge station for the first floor zone. Is there one for the second floor?

Ironman

It could be a bad circulator and your getting gravity flow upstairs.

What kind of heat emitters (radiators) do your have? What’s the pressure on the boiler gauge?

Can you post some pics of the boiler and its near piping from farther back?

mattmia2

This worked at some point, right? Did you change anything? It doesn't look like anything has been touched in a couple decades.

ScottSecor

Like @Ironman said above, most likely the circulator has failed and your getting gravity/ghost flow to the second floor.

JUGHNE

Did you post here with the same problem yesterday?
It is best to continue with the same posting.
You can edit the header to include your purging question.

Tommay has a point about those 1/4 turn valves. Rotate them as they could be cruded up inside.
You may have to loosen the hex packing nut the screw is inside of.
Only loosen 1/2 turn, no more, rotate screw several times and then leave it set parallel to the pipe. Snug the nut back up as it may drip.

Then if no improvement......shut off the power switch....... then unwire the pump that might not be running as mentioned, turn power back on for boiler to fire and after a few hours if no change in the upstairs heat you might assume the pump is not running.

Erin Holohan Haskell

@Buckeye01, I've merged your two posts into one here.