I'm a just signed up newbie making my first post. I'm a Canuck wintering in Gulf Shores Alabama for our fourth time.

Our house sitter back home is having a problem with the heating.

We have a 10 year old, oil fired boiler hot water system with five zones and using slant fin rads and all on one floor.

The 4 zones for the three bedrooms and bathroom each service one small slant fin rad each and seem to be working fine.

The biggest zone services 5 rads, consisting of 4 fairly big slant fin rads which is for the living/dining room, kitchen and 1 small rad at the bottom of the stairs going to the front door. That zone when operating normally has gone up to 74 F in the winter when it was accidently set too high and quite possibly could have gone higher.

For whatever reason that zone seems to be acting erratically this year, sometimes getting that zone up to only 19 Celsius (66.2 F) maximum and sometimes only up to 15C (59 F).

I had the thermostat changed but that had no effect.

The boiler also heats an in-door swimming pool with it's own thermostat and I turned the heat down for while we're away and it's maintaining a constant 60 F, so it's fine.

Is it possible for zone valves to for whatever reason start to act erratically?

I hope that's the case because replacing the zone valve would be a simple solution. I hope someone out there in cyberspace might have some good input on my problem. Thanx for your attention and consideration.

 

Does this have any correlation with the outside temperature swings?
Just a thought.
Geo

 

Considering the boiler, pump and all other zones are working and you have already changed the Tatar with the info provided it sounds like the zone valve could be the possible culprit.
Yes, zone valves can act erratic.

 

Geochurchi ...

The following is a tracking of the inside and outside temperatures that our house sitter sent me about a week ago. IT would have been better if he had tracked it longer for a bigger sample. He had the thermostat cranked up so if it was working properly the temperature should have been at least as high as 74 F. You can see that it had been warmer inside when the outside temperature had been colder.

Here is your daily thermostat temperatures:

Monday evening & Tuesday morning

6pm inside 18.5C / outside -18C

8pm inside 19C / outside -20C

10pm inside 17.5C / outside -20C

1am inside 17C / outside -24C

7am inside 15C / outside -20C light snow

10am inside 15C / outside -15C

Spott ...

I hope you're right. I think the next step will be to exchange the zone valve. I'll let ya'll know what happens although it may take me a while to arrange that in order to get the cheapest price to do it. That southern accent ya'll thing sure is contagious. I'm trying to get everyone down here to start saying "eh" and "oot and aboot".

 

My fault... I shouldn't have led the thread off topic... so I've deleted those posts.

 

OOPS!!! On other forums sometimes one tends to stray off topic a tad innocently having a little fun but apparently not on this site. In future I'll behave myself and lock up my sense of humour.

 

Check out the inside and outside temperatures I listed above. Although it's only over a very short period of less than a day they don't seem to track together.