We have a Sears gas boiler, which supplies 4 zones of heating in the
house through W-R zone-a-flow valves . We are only concerned with 3
here, as one is deliberately turned off.

We have well controlled thermostatic heat in 2 of the 3 zones, but we
did not have any heat in the garage, which has its own zone. Yikes --
with 10-yr record low temps here, we had to save the pipes!! The
thermostat in the garage was a bit beaten up, but no matter how I
manipulated the dial, the heat did not come on. I had the good sense
to check the White-Rodgers zone-a-flow water valves, and discovered
that, while the functioning zones' valves were open, the garage zone
valve was closed, so I manually opened it. Voila -- heat in the
garage! We are saved from doom (so far). The once frigid garage is
now recording temps of 50-52 degrees -- if that gets us over this
Siberian cold blast, fine. But I was kinda hoping to bring the temp
down to 40-45 degrees, or so.

Any way to get the thermostat to put out any temperature but 50
degrees? ANy idea why the W-R zone-a-flow valve did not open in
response to the thermostat, and had to be operated manually?

All the thermostats in the house are W-R 125-202 -- clearly an ancient
mode. I replaced the beaten up one with one I knew worked fine (from
the zone we are no longer heating), but the darned thing does not
control temperature any better than the beaten up one.

Clearly, the easy course is just to ignore the problem until the
Siberian front retreats, and take it up the wazoo for paying to heat a
poorly insulated garage to 52 degrees.

I checked for loose wiring on thermostat and zone-a-flow -- and
everything seems to be nice and tight.

Will upgrading to a more modern thermostat help? Or is it a deeper
wiring problem? Could it possibly be the garage zone-a-flow valve
malfunction (I checked the wiring and everything eems tight)?

Advice, O Home Repair Gurus, I humbly request.

i tried turning off the radiators in a stairwell zone to save money
one winter. when one froze, broke, and leaked it sprayed water. winter
is one season too late to prepare for winter. some systems are not set
up for what you are attempting. incompletely draining a zone in winter
will lead to damaging any low points of that zone that will freeze and
break.

On Feb 5, 2:43 am, wrote:
We have a Sears gas boiler, which supplies 4 zones of heating in the
house through W-R zone-a-flow valves . We are only concerned with 3
here, as one is deliberately turned off.

We have well controlled thermostatic heat in 2 of the 3 zones, but we
did not have any heat in the garage, which has its own zone. Yikes --
with 10-yr record low temps here, we had to save the pipes!! The
thermostat in the garage was a bit beaten up, but no matter how I
manipulated the dial, the heat did not come on. I had the good sense
to check the White-Rodgers zone-a-flow water valves, and discovered
that, while the functioning zones' valves were open, the garage zone
valve was closed, so I manually opened it. Voila -- heat in the
garage! We are saved from doom (so far). The once frigid garage is
now recording temps of 50-52 degrees -- if that gets us over this
Siberian cold blast, fine. But I was kinda hoping to bring the temp
down to 40-45 degrees, or so.

Any way to get the thermostat to put out any temperature but 50
degrees? ANy idea why the W-R zone-a-flow valve did not open in
response to the thermostat, and had to be operated manually?

All the thermostats in the house are W-R 125-202 -- clearly an ancient
mode. I replaced the beaten up one with one I knew worked fine (from
the zone we are no longer heating), but the darned thing does not
control temperature any better than the beaten up one.

Clearly, the easy course is just to ignore the problem until the
Siberian front retreats, and take it up the wazoo for paying to heat a
poorly insulated garage to 52 degrees.

I checked for loose wiring on thermostat and zone-a-flow -- and
everything seems to be nice and tight.

Will upgrading to a more modern thermostat help? Or is it a deeper
wiring problem? Could it possibly be the garage zone-a-flow valve
malfunction (I checked the wiring and everything eems tight)?

Advice, O Home Repair Gurus, I humbly request.

In article .com, wrote:
[snip]

Any way to get the thermostat to put out any temperature but 50
degrees? ANy idea why the W-R zone-a-flow valve did not open in
response to the thermostat, and had to be operated manually?

Clearly the valve itself is OK, since you could open it manually, so the
possibilities fall into five categories:

1) defective thermostat.
2) defective zone valve actuator.
3) defective wiring between them.
4) defective wiring supplying power to the actuator.
5) defective power transformer supplying power to the actuator.

All the thermostats in the house are W-R 125-202 -- clearly an ancient
mode. I replaced the beaten up one with one I knew worked fine (from
the zone we are no longer heating), but the darned thing does not
control temperature any better than the beaten up one.

That would appear to rule out #1 above.

Clearly, the easy course is just to ignore the problem until the
Siberian front retreats, and take it up the wazoo for paying to heat a
poorly insulated garage to 52 degrees.

Absolutely. May not be the best course :-) but it certainly is the easiest.

I checked for loose wiring on thermostat and zone-a-flow -- and
everything seems to be nice and tight.

That doesn't rule out a break somewhere in between, though.

Will upgrading to a more modern thermostat help? Or is it a deeper
wiring problem? Could it possibly be the garage zone-a-flow valve
malfunction (I checked the wiring and everything eems tight)?

No, maybe, and maybe, respectively. You could also have a failed 24V
transformer that isn't supplying any (or enough) power to the actuator.

Advice, O Home Repair Gurus, I humbly request.

What model of White-Rodgers zone valve is it? If it's not completely ancient,
you can find information about it on their web site at

http://www.white-rodgers.com/wrdhom/...ydronic_02.htm

Click the link for the zone valve you have, then find and click the
Troubleshooting link, and you'll get a short list of diagnostics that will
help you find where the problem is.

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.

It would appear that the powerhead of the zone valve is not getting 24 volts
needed to open,or the powerhead is bad. It's likely that all three valves
are powered from the same transformer, so it could be wiring , or
thermostat, or zone valve. I'm not familiar with this valve, it could have
two, three, or four wires,or terminals attached to it. If you can see which
two wires are attached to the valves motor, and check to see if there is 24
volts across those two wires with the thermostat set high. You can cross
check with a working valve, to be sure you're on the correct wires. This can
at least verify the valve's power head. The thermostat is probably the least
likely culprit and to verify it remove the wires attached to R or RH and W,
and twist them together. That should energize the valve, or at least send 24
volts to it



wrote in message
oups.com...
We have a Sears gas boiler, which supplies 4 zones of heating in the
house through W-R zone-a-flow valves . We are only concerned with 3
here, as one is deliberately turned off.

We have well controlled thermostatic heat in 2 of the 3 zones, but we
did not have any heat in the garage, which has its own zone. Yikes --
with 10-yr record low temps here, we had to save the pipes!! The
thermostat in the garage was a bit beaten up, but no matter how I
manipulated the dial, the heat did not come on. I had the good sense
to check the White-Rodgers zone-a-flow water valves, and discovered
that, while the functioning zones' valves were open, the garage zone
valve was closed, so I manually opened it. Voila -- heat in the
garage! We are saved from doom (so far). The once frigid garage is
now recording temps of 50-52 degrees -- if that gets us over this
Siberian cold blast, fine. But I was kinda hoping to bring the temp
down to 40-45 degrees, or so.

Any way to get the thermostat to put out any temperature but 50
degrees? ANy idea why the W-R zone-a-flow valve did not open in
response to the thermostat, and had to be operated manually?

All the thermostats in the house are W-R 125-202 -- clearly an ancient
mode. I replaced the beaten up one with one I knew worked fine (from
the zone we are no longer heating), but the darned thing does not
control temperature any better than the beaten up one.

Clearly, the easy course is just to ignore the problem until the
Siberian front retreats, and take it up the wazoo for paying to heat a
poorly insulated garage to 52 degrees.

I checked for loose wiring on thermostat and zone-a-flow -- and
everything seems to be nice and tight.

Will upgrading to a more modern thermostat help? Or is it a deeper
wiring problem? Could it possibly be the garage zone-a-flow valve
malfunction (I checked the wiring and everything eems tight)?

Advice, O Home Repair Gurus, I humbly request.

On Feb 5, 1:43 am, wrote:
We have a Sears gas boiler, which supplies 4 zones of heating in the
house through W-R zone-a-flow valves . We are only concerned with 3
here, as one is deliberately turned off.

We have well controlled thermostatic heat in 2 of the 3 zones, but we
did not have any heat in the garage, which has its own zone. Yikes --
with 10-yr record low temps here, we had to save the pipes!! The
thermostat in the garage was a bit beaten up, but no matter how I
manipulated the dial, the heat did not come on. I had the good sense
to check the White-Rodgers zone-a-flow water valves, and discovered
that, while the functioning zones' valves were open, the garage zone
valve was closed, so I manually opened it. Voila -- heat in the
garage! We are saved from doom (so far). The once frigid garage is
now recording temps of 50-52 degrees -- if that gets us over this
Siberian cold blast, fine. But I was kinda hoping to bring the temp
down to 40-45 degrees, or so.

Any way to get the thermostat to put out any temperature but 50
degrees? ANy idea why the W-R zone-a-flow valve did not open in
response to the thermostat, and had to be operated manually?

All the thermostats in the house are W-R 125-202 -- clearly an ancient
mode. I replaced the beaten up one with one I knew worked fine (from
the zone we are no longer heating), but the darned thing does not
control temperature any better than the beaten up one.

Clearly, the easy course is just to ignore the problem until the
Siberian front retreats, and take it up the wazoo for paying to heat a
poorly insulated garage to 52 degrees.

I checked for loose wiring on thermostat and zone-a-flow -- and
everything seems to be nice and tight.

Will upgrading to a more modern thermostat help? Or is it a deeper
wiring problem? Could it possibly be the garage zone-a-flow valve
malfunction (I checked the wiring and everything eems tight)?

Advice, O Home Repair Gurus, I humbly request.


On the powered zone valves in my house, the circulator pump does not
come on until a small switch on the zone valve is activated,
indicating the valve is fully open.

One valve motor was getting stiff, and it would't quite go far enough
to hit the switch.
You might have a similar arrangement/problem.

Dave

13 years late in my reply. Been through a few fried motors in the control valves here. Simple to do a controller refresh for me, as my valves are external (don't require me to open any plumbing)

--
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