"Speedy Jim" wrote in message
...
El Penguini wrote:
Hello All -

This is my first winter in my new home and there is an anomalous heating
issue.

The house is colonial with a bonus room over the garage (Finished Room Over
Garage - FROG in some areas). We have a high end furnace with hot water
baseboard heat. The first floor zone works great, but the second floor zone
has frozen on us each time it got below 10F. Fortunately we have plastic
pipes, but I don't like having heat. My opinion is that there is a pipe in
the bonus room freezing between furnace calls be the second floor
thermostat. The thermostat is in the hallway and is sometimes satisfied by
the first floor heat rise (particularly when the fireplace is going). This
results in the second floor heating system sitting idle long enough for the
pipe to freeze.

SNIP
One quickie fix may be to install a bypass around the 2nd floor
zone valve. Use a ball valve, which can be set to throttle flow.
Anytime the boiler circ pump runs (for the 1st floor), a small amt of
hot water will circ to the FROG whether or not 2nd floor stat is
calling for heat.

Come Spring you can do a better job of insulating the FROG.

Jim

This is Turtle.

I think you hit it there.
Now maybe a 1/4" needle valve like for cut offs for ice makers but have it
brass. Then you could almost run it wide open to not cut the seat out of the
valves.

TURTLE