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Faulty Pressuretrol or…?

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ka4222
ka4222 Member Posts: 13
in Strictly Steam
Hey everyone,

About 2 weeks ago, my heat went out and my heat guy came out and diagnosed the pressuretrol as the issue. He cleaned out the pigtail which got it working until the next day - when it went out again. 

Since he couldn’t come back til Monday, he talked me through buying a new pressuretrol/pigtail and installing myself. Which was great until today (roughly 2 weeks later). I can manually turn on the system by clicking the pressuretrol and it’s now heating back up for the past half hour (the house got pretty cold before I realized). I know he won’t be able to make it out til Monday at the earliest so looking for any wisdom for what might be the issue. 

Pressuretrol is set to cut in at 1 (.5 seemed to shut off prematurely so I’ve left it at 1 until he’s scheduled to come out Friday). Diff is set to what my old one was - about 1.5. 

Comments

  • Jamie Hall
    Jamie Hall Member Posts: 23,364
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    You really need a low pressure gauge to figure out what the pressuretrol really thinks it is doing. They are not always the most accurate devices... and it may be far enough out of calibration that it is not cutting back in properly. Try dropping the differential to 1, but raising the cutin to 15. Stoll higher than I'd like to see -- but if the pressuretrol is wonky, it may actually be lower.
    Br. Jamie, osb
    Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
  • STEAM DOCTOR
    STEAM DOCTOR Member Posts: 1,974
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    Clicking the pressure troll? Is this a manual reset
  • neilc
    neilc Member Posts: 2,705
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    and the pipgtail is clean and clear,
    but,
    what about where it connects back to the boiler?
    was it blown thru?
    known to beat dead horses
  • ka4222
    ka4222 Member Posts: 13
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    STEAM DOCTOR said:
    Clicking the pressure troll? Is this a manual reset
    Yes, I think so? My heat guy told me it’s a way to make the pressuretrol kick in. When I press the metal lever in the pressuretrol down, the boiler still kicks on and runs for a cycle. So would that be a manual reset?
  • ka4222
    ka4222 Member Posts: 13
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    neilc said:
    and the pipgtail is clean and clear, but, what about where it connects back to the boiler? was it blown thru?
    Hmm no, it wasn’t. The pigtail was just removed and cleaned (and I ran water through before installing as well). Would that be a next step to troubleshoot?
  • ka4222
    ka4222 Member Posts: 13
    edited November 2023
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    Jamie Hall said:
    You really need a low pressure gauge to figure out what the pressuretrol really thinks it is doing. They are not always the most accurate devices... and it may be far enough out of calibration that it is not cutting back in properly. Try dropping the differential to 1, but raising the cutin to 15. Stoll higher than I'd like to see -- but if the pressuretrol is wonky, it may actually be lower.
    Just lowered the differential to 1 but my cut in tops out at 9. Would you suggest raising it to 9 and seeing what happens?

    edit: just upped my cut in from 1 to just 2 and the boiler kicked on (which it hadn’t been despite turning the thermostat all the way up) so that’s a good sign. Not sure what that means for what my problem is though?
  • neilc
    neilc Member Posts: 2,705
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    can you post a picture of your Ptrol, or Ptrols?
    if you're pushing a red button to restart the boiler, well, either wrong Ptrol, or there's another we should talk about first,
    pictures of your Ptrols ?
    known to beat dead horses
  • Jamie Hall
    Jamie Hall Member Posts: 23,364
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    Well, since it has a differential and a cutin marking, it's not a manual reset, so we don't have to worry about that.

    I'm thinking that either the pigtail opening to the boiler is clogged, or the pressuretrol is more than usually far out of calibration.

    Do NOT raise the cutin any higher than is needed to make the boiler just barely restart after it shuts down on pressure, at least until you can get a reliable low pressure gauge on there to see what is really happening.

    If you turned the cutin up to 9, the cutour would be around 10 to 11, and even if we assume that your pressuretrol is 2 psi out of what, that would still be 7 to 9 psi running pressure -- which will be the end of all your vents and traps.
    Br. Jamie, osb
    Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
  • ethicalpaul
    ethicalpaul Member Posts: 5,707
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    @Jamie Hall I think the original poster is confused because you told him to set the cut-in to 15??

    You probably meant 1.5
    NJ Steam Homeowner. See my sight glass boiler videos: https://bit.ly/3sZW1el
  • Jamie Hall
    Jamie Hall Member Posts: 23,364
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    I did. Old stiff fingers...
    Br. Jamie, osb
    Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
    ethicalpaul
  • Waher
    Waher Member Posts: 252
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    Pressuretrols are notorious for poor factory calibration. Until you install a low pressure gauge and observe the operation you are not going to be able to get it perfectly set to a 0.5PSI cut-in and 1.5PSI cut-out.

    I had to adjust mine to these settings to achieve the proper cut-in and cut-out according to a low pressure gauge which would be impossible if all I had to rely on was the factory markings.

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