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Broken/Frozen Taco valve help?

ColdInTheNorth
ColdInTheNorth Member Posts: 6
in Radiant Heating

Greetings again to the wonderful folk on this forum!

I have restored the heat in this system to working order, and the baseboard heat is working in one zone but not the other. It’s been very cold in Chicago over the last few days, and I am not completely confident in this buildings insulation.

I have pushed the manual opening lever on the misbehaving zone all the way, but the pipes downstream of it are the same temperature, cool but not particularly so. The pipes in the baseboards are much colder, doesn’t feel frozen, but hard to tell.

The valve itself is warm, though not as warm as the pipes leading into it.

I can’t think of anything non crazy to do here, the valve can’t be replaced without draining the system I believe.

in the picture below, the right taco valve is the zone where heat is working, and the left (apologies for bad picture) is the non functional one.

I’ve considered closing the cutoff valve below the right valve, to force water into the other valve, but I don’t know how circulator pumps work and whether the pressure could cause damage faster than it could melt the (maybe) ice.

IMG_5051.jpeg
IMG_5051.jpeg

Comments

  • Jamie Hall
    Jamie Hall Member Posts: 25,607

    Well, you can try closing a valve to shunt all the water into the one zone, but… if it's frozen somewhere, it's likely to stay that way. It won't hurt the pump to try, though, if you don't leave it that way too long.

    Any of the piping associated with that zone on an outside wall?

    Br. Jamie, osb
    Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
  • ColdInTheNorth
    ColdInTheNorth Member Posts: 6

    Thanks Jamie, yes unfortunately, that zone runs where I may have a frozen toilet as well, along the outside.

    The circulator certainly won't make enough pressure to risk bursting a pipe correct? When you say too long, is that ten minutes, or thirty?

  • EBEBRATT-Ed
    EBEBRATT-Ed Member Posts: 17,188

    I wouldn't try it for more than 10 min. I would say (hate to say it) that it sounds like you are frozen. If the lever on the valve moved all the way then the valve is likely open.

  • mattmia2
    mattmia2 Member Posts: 11,735

    or air bound if you are lucky. if the system was unused it could have air in it although the baseboard is a great place to freeze things.

  • GroundUp
    GroundUp Member Posts: 2,286

    You can try to consolidate flow to the zone in question by closing the other valve. If the pipe isn't hot within a few seconds, it's not flowing and doesn't pay to run it any longer because it'll never free up without some sort of intervention. If freezing is a possibility as you say, get some auxiliary heat in that room and get it thawed.

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