WTF is with these radiators??
 

Hi Everyone ~

Big iron FHW radiators in an old colonial in Mass. Oil burner in the
basement, just tuned up and checked last week. At the end of last
season, one of the upstairs radiator and one of the downstairs
radiators were slow to get hot for the 1st time in 7 years, which I
tell the service guy.

Serviceman checks them, they are bled and all the valves are open
wide. System is working fine as far as he can tell, but they are
still slow to get hot - he thinks the zone around the thermo is
getting hot too fast to allow the system time to reach the offending
radiators.

That seems strange, as they were fine for the past 7 years.

Any thoughts? Things to check?

Thanks,


Bluesman

Bluesman wrote:

Hi Everyone ~

Big iron FHW radiators in an old colonial in Mass. Oil burner in the
basement, just tuned up and checked last week. At the end of last
season, one of the upstairs radiator and one of the downstairs
radiators were slow to get hot for the 1st time in 7 years, which I
tell the service guy.

Serviceman checks them, they are bled and all the valves are open
wide. System is working fine as far as he can tell, but they are
still slow to get hot - he thinks the zone around the thermo is
getting hot too fast to allow the system time to reach the offending
radiators.

That seems strange, as they were fine for the past 7 years.

Any thoughts? Things to check?


Well, if he's right, then partially closing the valves on the radiator(s)

nearest the thermostat should fix the problem.

On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 13:12:27 -0400, default
wrote:

|
|
| Bluesman wrote:
|
| Hi Everyone ~
|
| Big iron FHW radiators in an old colonial in Mass. Oil burner in the
| basement, just tuned up and checked last week. At the end of last
| season, one of the upstairs radiator and one of the downstairs
| radiators were slow to get hot for the 1st time in 7 years, which I
| tell the service guy.
|
| Serviceman checks them, they are bled and all the valves are open
| wide. System is working fine as far as he can tell, but they are
| still slow to get hot - he thinks the zone around the thermo is
| getting hot too fast to allow the system time to reach the offending
| radiators.
|
| That seems strange, as they were fine for the past 7 years.
|
| Any thoughts? Things to check?
|
|
| Well, if he's right, then partially closing the valves on the radiator(s)
|
| nearest the thermostat should fix the problem.
|

Hot water radiator valves need to be either all the way on or
completely off. Partially closing them does nothing.

|

Hot water radiator valves need to be either all the way on or
completely off. Partially closing them does nothing.

Well, admittedly, I was thinking about steam radiators,
having keyed on "big iron", instead of FWH, but unless
the radiators in question are either hooked up serially
with no bypasses, or driven by separate pumps,
I can't see why it wouldn't work, anyway.
Are you thinking of solonoid-driven valves, which
don't really HAVE a partially closed state, or is
there something about the dynamics of a typical
HWH system that causes them to ignore flow restrictions?

--Goedjn

"Bluesman" wrote in message
om...

SNIP

Any thoughts? Things to check?

Thanks,


Bluesman

If you have the cast iron heaters fed by black iron pipe, your heaters may
have resticted flow through them due to build up and corrosion. I was
working on a site where, when commissioning the HVAC controls system, we had
to verify each hot water heater operation. A number of them I could feel
the top half of the heater supply pipe get hot before the bottom half of the
same pipe did. The plumbing contractor removed one heater where we found
that the bottom half of the heatrer was filled with "sludge". The heater
had been in service for nearly 20+ years.

Something to look for.
Contech