Cannot figure out zoning in my home

itsuke · January 6

Hi everyone,

First post here and amateur in the HVAC world.

I have 2 zones in my house. One heats the basement and the other heats the 2 other floors. Basement floor is heated using traditional baseboards. Other two floors are all heating using radiators. My furnace runs on gas. This is a water heated system.

My dilemma here is that I cannot figure out why I cannot get the zone downstairs to kick on by itself without having to turn the heat upstairs on. I have tried moving the wiring on the furnace and on my thermostats around multiple times and I cannot figure this out.

This is a simple two wire system. Power and Heat, I have recently added a Common wire which is being powered by a separate transformer since my thermostats (nest gen 3 and nest learning E) require a C wire.

The wiring is messed up (as in not properly screwed down) while I have been testing. This is temporary and it will be fixed after I have both zones properly working.

Can anyone please give me some insight on why I cannot get my basement to work individually and have the flame kick on the furnace (and water running to the baseboards) without the zone upstairs being on.

Any help is appreciated as I am completely lost on how all of this works.

dko · January 6

You have a steam boiler, not a furnace.
Only your basement is hot water, making use of the hot water in the boiler that is used to make steam.

Follow the wire on the circulator behind the boiler, where does it go

neilc · January 6

and I'll take a stab at it looks like the way wires are in and out of the Ptrol, you or who tried to wire in the basement zone, in series with the steam,
you need 2 separate wiring systems there, and a aquastat controlling the circ and or calling the boiler,

show the circulator, and the aquastat, which I might see under the low water cut off, and their wires connecting to above controls

Big Ed_4 · January 6

You would need to add a A aquastat to heat up the boiler if only the condensation baseboard is calling . Right now it is dogging off the steam system ...

itsuke · January 10

@neilc @dko @Big Ed_4 thank you all for your replies. I have just seen them as I did not know that my post was approved. You are all correct. This is a steam boiler. The circulator behind works. I had a professional come out- this is what I got from them. One of the returns from the steam side runs to ONE of the two of my baseboards, the other one is running solely from my boiler. He mentioned that there is not enough water that the boiler can hold to heat up my baseboards. I do not know if this is the case or not, my baseboards are cold to the touch when there is call for heat without the steam zone fired up.

Not too sure what the issue is here. @dko the wires from the circulator run directly into the little relay/transformer shown in the picture. When I have my thermostat wired up, it does call for heat and the circulator turns on, but it simply does not heat. The tech drained my system out as he believed there was air in the system. It was not a full bleed because I was watching him, however there was a lot of dirty water that came out...

@neilc I will add more pictures now...

@Big Ed_4 would I need to add another aquastat? Can you go into more depth on this and why? Sorry I am no where near an expert and would love to understand how this whole thing works.

Thank you to all of you. I would appreciate continued help as I want to get to the bottom of this and find a fix.

itsuke · January 10

I added some more picture of the circulator, transformer, hot water boiler that one of the pipes is pulling water from and running to my steam boiler and then baseboard...

mattmia2 · January 10

don't pay that tech, they don't know what they're doing. The other contact on that relay for the circulator has to close a heat call to the boiler that is limited through an aquastat, that is how the boiler gets fired for the hot water loop. I can't tell if there is one somewhere on your system. It could be in a well in the boiler or strapped on to the piping going to the hot water loop.

itsuke · January 10

Pressure seems to always stay around 4-6 PSI, is this normal operating range on these? This is when steam is obviously on...

Jamie Hall · January 10

You may need to start all over with the wiring.

Thus type of arrangement is really very simple. You need two separate controls for the boiler. One is an aquastat -- usually in the boiler, but it could be part of the baseboard piping. This aquastat should call for the burner to fire if the water is too cold, and it should turn open -- turning off the burner -- if the water is not enough. Your basement thermostat should turn on the circulator pump in the basement. Doesn't have to do anything else.

Now the second set of controls is for the steam upstairs. This should turn on the burner when the thermostat calls for heat, provided the low water cutoff and the pressuretrol on the boiler are closed. Thus this thermostat needs to be in series with both of those. The pressuretrol will ensure that the boiler steam pressure stays where it belongs.

OK. Let's see how this works. The downstairs thermostat calls for heat. The circulator turns on. The aquastat senses the water temperature, and if it is too cold turns on the boiler. You get warm water for your baseboards. The upstairs thermostat calls for heat. The boiler turns on and makes steam. Now this steaming boiler is plenty hot for the baseboards, so the only thing the circulator has to do is run if it's called.

Simple.

Well, maybe not. Since you have fancy thermostats, you also need to power them -- and you would be well advised to have them control relays which, in turn would control the pump or the boiler, as the case may be.

Alan (California Radiant) Forbes · January 10

Make sure your home's fire insurance is paid and up to date.

mattmia2 · January 10

itsuke said:
Pressure seems to always stay around 4-6 PSI, is this normal operating range on these? This is when steam is obviously on...

No but those gauges are notoriously inaccurate in that range. you need a 0-3 or 0-5 psi gauge to measure the pressure. There is no reason it ever needs to be more what a few ounces/in^2 but if the boiler is oversized it might need to be more to keep it from short cycling.

Is the pigtail to the pressuretrol clean?

itsuke · January 10

mattmia2 said:
don't pay that tech, they don't know what they're doing. The other contact on that relay for the circulator has to close a heat call to the boiler that is limited through an aquastat, that is how the boiler gets fired for the hot water loop. I can't tell if there is one somewhere on your system. It could be in a well in the boiler or strapped on to the piping going to the hot water loop.

I gave him a couple of bucks for the time he spent to come out. Just trying to understand this, so the honeywell aquastat that is on there now is obviously only controlling one zone (the steam) correct? Would I need a separate one for the baseboard? The call for the hot water is directly coming from the literal HOT water boiler... not too sure if this is traditional but this is definitely the case because I can manually add water to the steam boiler and hear the water gurgling in the hot water boiler...

Also, does my steam boiler need to fire up when calling for heat for my baseboard zone? Wouldn't this cause the other steam zone to kick on as well? I am just following the information I was given by this tech, I could be totally wrong here.

itsuke · January 10

Alan (California Radiant) Forbes said:
Make sure your home's fire insurance is paid and up to date.

Haha I was going to comment on this and say to ignore the damn peppers. I didn't put them up, but I will be damn sure to take them down.

mattmia2 · January 10

What is this? It could be a LWCO or an aquastat.

This is a pressuretrol. It shuts off the boiler if the steam pressure gets too high (assuming the pigtail and other piping from it to the boiler is clear).

There should be an aquastat for the hot water heating that heats the boiler to something below boiling, usually about 180 f, so it doesn't produce steam on a hot water only call.

itsuke · January 10

mattmia2 said:
What is this? It could be a LWCO or an aquastat.

This is a pressuretrol. It shuts off the boiler if the steam pressure gets too high (assuming the pigtail and other piping from it to the boiler is clear).

There should be an aquastat for the hot water heating that heats the boiler to something below boiling, usually about 180 f, so it doesn't produce steam on a hot water only call.

The first picture if the low water cut off. The second is what you are saying is a pressuretrol. This is connected to the Rh on my thermostat. R is usually power, I don't understand how this makes any sense now. Where should this white wire coming out of it connect to? Not too sure how to follow the pigtail and where it runs to? Is it next to the burner?

Cannot figure out zoning in my home

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