How to turn off circulated baseboard heat in spare room from steam boiler.

tommyello

We have a wil Mclain boiler installed several years ago which heats our home and has one additional zone which is circulated hot water through a baseboard in a spare room.

This room has a separate thermostat to adjust the temp and on/off of the circulated heat in this room which I believe may be controlled by a Taco SR501 1 zone switch relay. (The light on this relay is green but I can't say I can hear any activity from it.)

Well, the thermostat stopped controlling the temp, on/off of the heat in this room, the result is one very warm room and overall slightly cooler home when our heat is on.

Is there any manual way of turning off this circulating water before I have a repair done? In the past with our old boiler it seems that it would cost about $700 which I think we maybe did 2x and but it was the opposite issue. The room got no heat as the boiler had been installed improperly and if the boiler ran low, all the water would drain to one floor below and we'd have to get it pumped back up and replace the pump.

This time we were assured the way the pipes were run that the water would not drain down to the basement and that would seem to be true but now we are heating the coldest room overnight because we can't control heat via the thermostat off in this room.

We did call an electrician who looked at it and said all was good with the thermostat and that we needed a plumber. Ugh.

I thought maybe there might something we could manually switch off to stop the water flow. At the baseboard I can see a place were you can use a small key to presumably turn or adjust something but it seems to be in the middle of the baseboard, not at the beginning or end. I don't have a key for this but can pick one up.

From the boiler I really only see two water shutoffs from the pipes in/out of the boiler and don't want to mess with that.

Just trying to temporarily avoid another big bill going into the holidays. TY!

LRCCBJ

The SR501 has two lights on the front. One is power (the upper). One is "zone 1" (the lower).

Is the zone 1 light illuminated?

EBEBRATT-Ed

You can shut one or both of the manual valves going to the HW loop, but you have to be sure the pump will not run with the valves closed. You could disconnect the wiring from the circ pump if there is no separate switch for this pump. If the room that the HW zone heats will be subject to freezing, then you could cause a frozen pipe in that room.

It is possible that you have a bad flow check valve on the HW loop causing the water to circulate by gravity even if the pump is off.

Pictures of the HW loop piping around the boiler and the boiler controls will help.

tommyello

yes, there are two lights and the zone light is off.

tommyello

And these are the two cables coming from the Taco into another… contraption. The Taco is on the left out of frame attached to the side of the boiler.

tommyello

And there is one turnoff valve above this.

tommyello

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1823241#Comment_1823241

Yes, the zone 1 light is off.

tommyello

You can hear the water wooshing through the pipes for the room with the baseboard when the heat goes on so it's definitely circulating in there and the room warms up etc.

Ironman

You’re better off leaving it alone until you can get a competent tech to look at it.

As Ed mentioned, closing the valve may cause a pipe to freeze and break or damage the circulator.

tommyello

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1823253#Comment_1823253

Good advice. I am not going to mess with anything and will have a plumber in to see what's involved.

So frustrated with our last system after we realized the way it was piped would allow the water to flow out of the baseboard down to the basement and I guess in the process it would damage the pump or what controlled the water flow. After the second time that happened we just put radiant heaters in the room.

I think we're in a much better situation now with the new boiler but probably costing us a bit more heating this room and not getting all the heat to our main living spaces.

Thanks for everyone's input, sometimes it's 'just a button' and I can usually handle that.

mattmia2

Is this a steam system with a hot water loop?

You can close the damper on the emitter or cover it with something like a blanket and reduce the heat output.

pedmec

You should have another flocheck valve on the return side of the system and another ball valve. It might be hung open from debris especially if you're tied into the bottom tappings of the boiler. Or both flochecks are bad and you are getting gravity or ghost circulation.

You don't want any vents on the baseboard system that would allow air to enter the baseboards and drain the system. You will lose your vacuum along with the atmospheric pressure keeping the loop filled.

tommyello

UPDATE:

I had a plumber visit my home and showed them the issue. They focused on the thermostat and noted that I had it in 'HOLD' mode at like 74F. He showed me how to take the thermostat off of HOLD mode and we heard a click, which was the unit turning off.

The room did cool off a bit and I was both thoroughly embarassed as it seemed to have been simply a lack of knowledge of the thermostat (Emmerson branded White-Rodgers programmable digital thermostat model 1F87-361).

However, in the two days since i learned how to use a thermostat, I have noticed that the room is still circulating hot water and the room will stay several degrees above the set temperature. Also, if the thermostat is switched 'OFF', the baseboard will remain warm and the room will stay at say 67F even if the rest of the house is 62F.

I thought this an easy win and a fix but the issue probably needed to be explored further.

Will keep you posted but definitely sounds like a valve not stopping circulation of water.

Grallert

So just to be clear. Can you turn the circulator on and off with the thermostat? Or can you turn the red light on the SR501 on and off with the thermostat? With the circulator off do you feel hot pipes in the radiators? If the pump is off and those pipes are hot along the length of the radiators then you have a ghost flow from either the supply side or the return side of that loop. This would mean you need a flow check.

Another thing. If you're hearing sloshing in the heating pipes while the pump is running it's likely there is air. Maybe more air than water. That can be a noisy and destructive problem is that water is able to flash to steam.