I live in an old house (circa 1957) built and maintained by a series of drunk monkeys, and 10 years after purchase I continue to discover “quirks.” Two floors, plus finished basement. Runs on oil, with hot water supplying heat through baseboards.The house has just 1 thermostat, in dining room of first floor.
Anyway, a few days ago, I discovered the upstairs bathroom and my son’s room were COLD. The baseboards weren’t coming on. The system was noisy, so I knew air was in the system. I bled the bathroom heater, and it began working. My son’s didn’t work, no matter how much it was bled. The hot water comes up to the second floor thru the bathroom into my son’s room.
I got my oil/heating company to come out. They found a valve wasn’t working and replaced it. The system stopped making noise. The bathroom worked gangbusters. My son’s heater stayed cool. The heating guy said to bleed the line until it got hot, because there was still some residual air.
I bled the line until it was quite warm. The pipe going from the wall into the baseboard heater got warm. Cool. Closed it up. 20 min later, cold again.
I have now gone through this MANY times in past 2 days. Tonight I bled it for 10 min solid. The water got too hot to touch. The fins a few feet down began making that getting warm clicky noise. I thought it was settled.
I went up an hour later- no dice. Cold again. It is JUST this baseboard. All others on first and second floor are warm and responsive to thermostat. There are no noises in the pipes or baseboards anywhere. No air comes from the line in my son’s room. It is a solid stream of water that starts cold and gets hot within a minute or so. But after the valve is closed, it seems to stop working a few minutes later.
Any ideas? Should I let it bleed for awhile after getting hot? Calling the tech back over the weekend would be extremely expensive, but it is also VERY cold here.
Circulating pump is out. My water in a system of that vintage is pumped throughout the pipes. Without the pump working, heat only rises so far. Bleeding it just removes the cold water which is replaced by warm water forced up to the baseboard by the makeup water entering the system by the furnace.
ETA: what valve? With one T-stat, you have one zone which should not have any valves. Unless it was the preseeure regulator or makeup water valve. Good reason to have your system annually checked in September. Put it on your calendar now for next fall.
So here are pictures of the heater and the part that was replaced. That gold thing that looks like a duck is the thing that they said had gone wrong and put a new one in. they said the last one wasn’t functioning properly and letting too much air in. Before it was a green thing and didn’t look as much like a duck. Is this not a valve of some nature?
I’ll be honest, I’m a forenaic psychologist by trade. I know less than nothing about household mechanics.
That looks like the pressure regulator, bleed off valve which lets excess air out. Without seeing the loops, it is possible the water needs to go up to the bathroom and down below a wall and then back up into the baseboard in the bedroom. See if you have a tin can sized thing perpendicular to the pipes near the furnace that has wires going to it. That needs to be running whenever the thermostat calls for heat. I do not know how to verify if the pump is running visually. Without the pump the boiler should heat up faster and run shorter cycles with longer than normal cooldowns as the water is moving gravitationally {heat rises} and not mechanically via the pump. My pumps averaged 4-5 years before needing replacement. One cold bedroom on a holiday weekend always seemed to be the sign.
So a pipe goes up into the bathroom to the baseboard there. The radiator runs along the wall, turns the corner, runs along the second wall, and disappears into an almost entirely inaccessible crawl space for about 10 feet. It then re-emerges from the wall into my son’s room, runs across the wall, turns a corner, and goes down another wall of his room.
Nothing with wires is found anywhere, but I will check the basement again. The bathroom radiator is piping hot. There is another bedroom upstairs, but is not connected to these other two rooms, and it also works just fine.
When the naughty one is bled in my son’s room, the water comes out cold, even though the bathroom is hot. It gets piping hot, and heat goes down about 2ft of the wall. You turn off the bleeder bit, and 20 min later, cold again.
No tin can with wires. The pipe goes up, into the bathroom, and across to the other room. Here is a picture of the pipes down in the basement, where they go up to the house, and of the upstairs. Straight ahead that open door is the bathroom. In that closed closet in the center is a tiny fairy door to the crawl space. One can’t really get into it. The pipe runs thru there and into the bedroom to the left. So straight flat the whole way.
The only thermostat in the whole house is down in the dining room. The bedrooms can get quite hot normally, as the dining room is in the draftiest possible place, and so the thermostat there tends to react to the drafts where everywhere else is quite warm. We set it to 60 at night and sometimes still need to crack windows in the bedroom if the door is closed.
No isolation valves (anything with a handle) in the run to/from your son’s room? No recent modifications to the system obviously else you’d have mentioned them. It’s possible the return line from the cold baseboard is corroded shut. I’m out of ideas beyond a blockage / closed return valve or a bad pump. Did the heating guys open all the valves up b4 they left? They’d have tried to isolate the area they were working on so they didn’t have to drain and refill the entire system. Actually wouldn’t even need to be fully open, just not tight shut. Even a slight crack works wonders. You may not have any hand valves for individual areas.
Nothing can be seen. The baseboard pipe goes into the wall, runs behind the closet, and comes out the wall in my son’s room on the left. Nothing modified in at least ten years, except the duck was replaced as mentioned previously and the button switch that starts the whole water heater got replaced last year. That little box with the pilot light and red button that goes click when you press it if the pilot goes out. Those are the only changes in 10 years.
I’m afraid I was down in the basement with them. They didn’t go upstairs except to see water came out of the pipe when it was bled after they were done. They turned off the entire system, replaced the duck, and turned it back on. Nothing was drained. All other heaters work. I assume it must be some sort of block because the other baseboard on this same line obviously works. I will call them on Monday.
I was an hvac tech for the usps but 11 years retired now. I had several buildings with boilers and radiators/baseboard heaters but all had one or more pumps.
That “duck” thing looks like the make-up water pressure regulator and they do sometimes get fouled and/or clogged up. Can you get a name and number off of that? The maker may be Watts. Is that line your make-up (to fill the system) water line, do you know? I see a hand valve, what looks like a check valve and then your “duck”.
Are there pressure gauges anywhere? Usually on the boiler itself if nowhere else. I’m wondering if the pressure in the system is too low due to your bleeding and perhaps the make-up water not filling sufficiently. You should have about 12 psi (cold) if the system is filled properly. I just zoomed in on your picture of the boiler and it looks like that gauge on the side is dual purpose, probably pressure and temperature. See if you have 12 or so pounds of pressure in the system.
Again, I have to admit to never working on a system without a pump. If you do call someone, ask them if you have a pump and if so, have them show you where it is and how to tell if it is working.
Is there any possibility some woodland creature has gotten into your house and dislodged some insulation from somewhere along the length of the radiator pipe (i.e., behind the wall or in a crawl space)?
The duck thing is newly installed. I doubt it would be fouled up because it literally was installed just the day before yesterday. I just checked the PSI and it is at about 20. However, it has been working quite a bit because here it is about one degree outside. I can tell you when we looked at it when it was cold it was at about 12 PSI. It ordinarily hovers around 12 PSI but does go up a bit after it has been cranking for a while to heat the house and heat water, as it has been doing this morning.
Yes, that is definitely a realistic possibility. however, when I have looked inside the crawl space I haven’t seen any evidence of animals or any noticeable problems.
Something else I thought of. When you bleed it, does the heat come from the bathroom direction or from the line returning to the basement? The direction it does not come from would be where I look for an issue if it isn’t the pump. Possibly still an airlock if the piping isn’t level. A pump would push water through that and dissolve it.