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Heating & Air Conditioning

Radiator flush problems

9 years ago

I have hot water baseboard heating with 3 zones (2 heat 1 indirect tank). about 3 weeks ago it takes a long time to raise the temperature to 68-69 degrees in one zone (first floor). most days it barely passes 66 degrees after 12 hours from 64 overnight. the other zones work fine. Also there is a kickheater in the kitchen which stopped working around the same time.

on the first floor zone two radiators that are first in line from the boiler get hot and the ones further away barely get warm. i flushed the first floor zone from the boiler.

my steps:

shut off the boiler

closed the values going to the circulator

manually open the zone valves

connected the hose to the zone for the first floor (problem area)

there is a very small yellow valve at the hose connection which i opened

some water came out then stopped

manually open the water supply feeder

water stopped flowing after 2 gallons

opened the main valve and the water gushed out

after 20 gallons of release i turned everything back on and now no flow at all to the first floor zones. i tried again this time left the boiler on and again barely any water flow. i turned off the boiler and water gushed out again. i think its the kick heater but not sure. there is no bleed valve on the kick heater.

sorry for making it so long. any help would be appreciated.

thanks

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Comments (2)

PRO
CJ Mechanical of North jersey llc.
9 years ago
I recommend a pro to come in . Every boiler is piped differantly and you could crack your boiler .
jemdandy
9 years ago
Take a look at how the baseboard radiators are plumbed. One popular method runs a hot water supply line parallel to radiators. Individual radiators are connected in parallel to this line. Immediately downstream of the inlet to a radiator is a restrictor orifice (in the main line) that controls how much of the flow goes through a radiator and how much bypasses it. These orifices are sized so that each radiator gives off approximately the same amount of heat. Typically, the flow through each radiator increases downstream of its neighbor and 100% of the flow may pass through the last radiator in the chain. The sizing of these orifices is critical. The orifices become smaller in the downstream direction thus reducing the bypass flow and increasing the flow through individual radiators.

Discussions and equations for sizing these orifices can be found in mechanical engineering text books about heating and cooling. After careful calculations are made, many times it will be found these are estimates that provides a start point and that the final solution is adjustment by trial and error.

A simple system merely connects all radiators in series passing 100% of the flow through each radiator. The head end radiator runs the hottest with last radiator the coolest. Heat output diminishes in the downstream direction.
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