Radiant Zone Ghost Flow

tcassano87

So I’m curious how everyone else’s opinion on how they might resolve this issue compared to the couple ideas I have.
So on this system the Zone Valves & the Main Circulator are on the return side(White Line in Pic). A radiant zone was added as some point, wired separately to a Honeywell relay.

So what’s happening is when a zone calls(on the baseboard loops) because the radiant return is tied in between the zone valves & the circulator. The circulator is also pulling the return on the radiant causing the zone to circulate and heat up when it’s not being called. There’s a Flo-Check on the feed of the radiant already but it’s useless for what’s occurring.
My 2 ideas were to either

• Relocate the baseboard circulator to the feed & tie the Radiant return in at the bottom away from the baseboard loop & adding a check on the return.
• What might easier is to just add a zone valve to the radiant return side(where the ball valve is) so it acts as a check valve preventing the return from circulating when not being called. Never wired a zone valve though like this so would certain lol some advice or best ways to do so. Since they don’t have single zone valve relay controls.

Not trying to reinvent the wheel here for this customer, trying to resolve the issue with as minimal cost as possible

hot_rod

you could get a 120v zone valve and just wire it to the radiant pump, no relay needed

It takes a few seconds gir the ZV to fully open, I don’t think that would be an issue

tcassano87

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1890080#Comment_1890080

I’ve never used or worked on them, that sounds like a great idea. So the zone valve would just get wired to the pump itself or at the existing relay? Then zone valve would open when heat calls and turns the circulator on. Are they 4 wire, would need to also wired to the end switch?

Big Ed_4

Did you try cleaning the flow check ?

tcassano87

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1890092#Comment_1890092

Flo Check isn’t doing anything, if you look at the picture, it’s not heat rising through CW, it’s the circulator pulling the return and circulating the zone. When the ball valve on the return is closed the issue stops but then you can use the heating zone

hot_rod

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1890084#Comment_1890084

The pump and ZV are just wired together. No need for an end switch. Just a basic 120 V N.C. zone valve.

tcassano87

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1890106#Comment_1890106

def seems like the simplest/affordable solution, thanks for you’re help. Always good to learn something knew