Taco Zone valve troubleshooting. Heating issue manually opening zone valve still no heat

potatoskater

Tale of two valves: Checked voltage and one of the valves was not 24 volts so I cleaned the wires as two looked not so shiny and then 24 volts. Manually opening zone valve was hard and still no heat. I purged air as best as I could and will try again tomorrow but nothing,

Other zone valve that was getting 24 volts but no heat, the screw to close the return was corroded with blue and I couldn’t turn it to close it to purge the air, I purged anyways but don’t know how effective this was, very cold weather coming in a couple days, down to 6 degrees so I am trying to get this sorted. Really need heat in the garage as part of the house above relies on that heat rising up. Thanks f8r the help!

Was considering marking wires and temporarily swapping zone heads to see if the non functional zones would spring to life,
Circulator motor is very hot, burned my ear listening to it make a gentle whirring sound.
Both of the questionable Zone valves are cold to touch

potatoskater

Good top tacos

potatoskater

Forgot another thing: when I first was looking the red wire going to terminal 1 of the zone valve that wasn’t opening appeared broken at the screw, or almost broken and when I touched it it broke so I removed screw and stripped and reattached. Seemed odd for the wire to get so beat up?

Grallert

How many zones? Of those how many are working properly?

potatoskater

Thanks, 4 zones and I think 2 are ok, but the way they are labeled,
‘basement’ Not ok,
“garage” not ok
“2nd floor” OK
“1st floor” :only half of the radiators are hot. So I was thinking perhaps half of the first floor is on another zone? The garage radiator is only 10 feet long or so so I was guessing half of the first floor is also on that zone? Basement is small too…I don’t know.

Right now 30 volts across most of the zones. Except 2nd flor where no volts therm is not calling fir more heat

potatoskater

Just checked, when I manually try to open the two bad zones, the garage zone valve gets hot, the basement one does not…

hot_rod

Is the circulator actually spinning? If it is very hot it could be stuck.

Any work done recently that would induce air into the system? What pressure are you running?

potatoskater

Pressure is at 20. Could be air, I tried to purge like crazy. I think pump is running as heat is making it to part of first and up to second floor ok

hot_rod

If you slowly, manually open a zone valve and the circ is running you should hear the water rushing through the valve. Velocity will be fairly high when the valve first starts to crack open, Maybe even a crackling sound at first 

it’s possible to get some heat transfer to upper levels even if the circulator is not actually moving flue, Thermo siphoning some heat

If you are purging properly an no air comes out, it not an air problem, keep looking.

Any strainers in the system that could be restricting flow? A screen at that boiler somewhere?

potatoskater

I don’t think so. I’m baffled why only half of the first floor is getting heat as it is supposedly all the same zone? I took off the power head and used a c clamp to depress the actuator but I’m not seeing anything yet…might need to call the guy?

potatoskater

One thing I am wondering about is that for the garage zone the shut off on the return is one of those twisty handle things (a gate valve), and it makes a weird noise when I turn it to open and close, I’m wondering if maybe it’s stuck closed and somehow broken inside?

potatoskater

The pump might explain things though as it is the two lower zones basement and garage that are not heating, that would make thermal siphoning harder I imagine as they are lower than the furnace outlet pipe, and the First floor has one zone but it breaks into two paths, perhaps if the pump isn’t working the thermal siphoning is only happening in one path? The easier way for the heat to travel perhaps

potatoskater

There are no shutoffs so I would need to drain everything to replace that, huh

hot_rod

potatoskater said:

There are no shutoffs so I would need to drain everything to replace that, huh

Unless you have some freeze cuffs, do you?

potatoskater

No, but zone valves will hold back some water or will it come around the other way? Thanks

potatoskater

And how do I refill afterwards, just turn water back on to boiler and boiler will refill? Then take me back to purge city?!