Radiant floor heating setup gurgles?

[Stayouttadabunker]

An Update to this project....

The 25yr. old defunct Cantherm520 ground source heat pump
is removed - along with it's 80 gal. recovery storage tank.
An 8yr. old DHW heater (40 gal. A.O.Smith) is now in operation...partly.
I flushed out years of rusty, brown sediment water with freshwater to the point where it's now fairly clear.

Both the top and bottom elements won't go above my multimeter-measured 119.36VAC.
Wiring is the same...I didn't change it at all.
In fact, the incoming leads measure 239.89VAC above the reset switch above the top element on the heater.

Incoming SWP ( Static Water Pressure) is 70psi.
I installed a brand new DHW air expansion tank onto the
cold intake port on top of the water heater.
The air expansion tank has about 45lbs of air.
Should I add more air?
I'm thinking it should be filled to about 68lbs psi?
It is ST-5 rated for 100lbs psi max.

Water pressure in shower is noticeably weaker than before but
the previous air tank had less psi - 12psi to be exact.
Of course, that was a boiler-type air expansion tank for the Cantherm520.
Why is there now less pressure coming out of the shower heads?

[Stayouttadabunker]

lol ! That Cantherm is too old and way beyond reasonable repairs.
I'd prefer to install a new unit later on to replace that using the existing spaghetti duct work system.

You're right on about the electric water valves being Honeywell's.
The ones on the storage tank close to the basement floor are shot from rust - in fact the motors' shaft came completely separated from the ball valve gear.
I need to disconnect the faulty Cantherm from the system I'm working on but first I need to replace some rusted shutoff water valves and rusted pressure relief valves that are leaking.
The workers at Aubachon hardware and Hulbert Bros. know me very well now...lol

Attached below is a picture of the Honeywell electric water valve similar to the 6 valves I have...>>>

[HayZee518]

Right! That's the way they're supposed to work. Honeywell and Taco makes them. The Taco can be a three or four wire terminal. When you turn up the thermostat, it feeds 24 volts to its own zone valve and heats a wax slug inside the head of the valve. When it is melted sufficiently the valve stem rises opening the valve and closes a set of contacts. the contacts feed a burner relay or control module which in the case of an oil fired boiler, turns on the burner. In your case it operates the zone circulator and may also turn on the water heater for the system. That large tank you got in the corner stores the hot water until its needed and the water heater heats up and re-inforces the water in that tank. the cantherm setup you have isn't hard to figure out. what its doing is extracting heat from that ground water loop and feeds it to a heat exchanger. THAT heat exchanger is coupled together with another one that uses freon like in an air conditioner and through the means of a refrigerant reversing valve operates the system like an air conditioner but puts out heat instead of cool air. in the summer the valve is reversed and blows cool air and deposits the warm air back into the ground water loop.

[Stayouttadabunker]

notice the two circulators don't have a flange ball valve like the blue one. they use the two gate valves on either side of the pump to isolate it from the system. I believe the inlet is the left side and outlet to each respective zone is on the right.

Good eyes HayZee,
On top of them ( I wish I would have included a photo) are two electric water valves
that are hooked up directly to each of the 2 room thermostats to make them "zoned".

When a room stat calls for more heat, it opens it's own valve via the zone panel box
and the circulator on that line kicks on.

[HayZee518]

notice the two circulators don't have a flange ball valve like the blue one. they use the two gate valves on either side of the pump to isolate it from the system. I believe the inlet is the left side and outlet to each respective zone is on the right.

[Stayouttadabunker]

I'll bet those machines were huge HayZee!

Here's some pictures of the old Amtrol #732 air vent I replaced with the newer one...
I've also attached a photo of the two circulators I'm going to use to zone the 2 slabs with electric water valves...

Don't blow your entire life savings down in Ct! lol
Win some dough man!>>>

[HayZee518]

the power company I worked for in Massachusetts used to overhaul one generator per every six months. each generator had eight large radiator coolers for the thrust bearing oil. on top of each cooler there was a float type air bleeder like the one you have only bigger. the mechanics overhauled those units when the units were taken out of service. the gunk that came out was enough to jam the float inside something that you found out by taking it apart. rusty water will do that to internal parts. a lot of the newer air relief valves are now sealed cheaper to buy a new one than trying to repair the old ones. less messier too! yeah, I'll help you. nov 7-8-9 I'm going to the mohegan sun in connecticut and blow some money but after that I'm free.

[Stayouttadabunker]

All those auto bleeders do the same job. They will take the air out even if you only have 5 LBS of pressure. Paul

Thanks paul !
I took it apart and see how it works!
It has a float and little piece of rubber on a lever that opens/closes the air hole depending on the height of water in the pipe.

The old air vent had very dirty lever points and it wasn't allowing the levers to move freely.
Rusty iron water had a LOT to do with restricting the movement
of the valves' components!

[paul52446m]

Radiant floor heating setup gurgles?

I found out something today.
They don't make the air vent I have (Amtrol Float Type Air Vent #732 Max. 45 psi ) on top of the air eliminator unit because it's been discontinued and they're now using a different one that looks like this one in the attachments below.
I couldn't even find a photo of one anywhere...all they had was of the old #700's -
which kind of look like mine.
I picked one up locally for about $6.
I want to make sure I get the air out!

I'm surprised they've changed the psi rating from 45 to 150?
Does that mean I have to have 150LBS of water pressure in order to get the air out?
Or would that be the max pressure before the valve blows up?
The body of it certainly looks beefier than the older ones.
My guess is that my pipes would come apart if I had THAT MUCH pressure in them...lol

Click on any picture to enlarge if needed...>>>

All those auto bleeders do the same job. They will take the air out even if you only have 5 LBS of pressure. Paul

[Stayouttadabunker]

I found out something today.
They don't make the air vent I have (Amtrol Float Type Air Vent #732 Max. 45 psi ) on top of the air eliminator unit because it's been discontinued and they're now using a different one that looks like this one in the attachments below.
I couldn't even find a photo of one anywhere...all they had was of the old #700's -
which kind of look like mine.
I picked one up locally for about $6.
I want to make sure I get the air out!

I'm surprised they've changed the psi rating from 45 to 150?
Does that mean I have to have 150LBS of water pressure in order to get the air out?
Or would that be the max pressure before the valve blows up?
The body of it certainly looks beefier than the older ones.
My guess is that my pipes would come apart if I had THAT MUCH pressure in them...lol

Click on any picture to enlarge if needed...>>>

[paul52446m]

all the water heater does is heat water. it doesn't care how much it's gonna heat - it just stays on and on to heat water. if you connect another loop to the existing loop it'll just take that much more time to heat whatever the slab's in. may not even work because there's so much volume of glycol/water to heat. parallel it might work but again you got so much to heat.
the room you want to control, does it go into the master thermostat panel? Is there a relay that pulls in when you vary the upstairs thermostat? Does this relay have an extra normally open set of contacts? The 75va transformer you have pictured is the source for all the thermostats in the house. the individual relays turn on or off elements of your heating system [motors, pumps, heaters etc] [controlling devices, not necessarily the devices themselves] a typical hydrionic heating system consists of a zone valve made by the TACO Co. It is installed in the line that feeds hot water to THAT zone. The valve has three terminals on it. When you turn up a room thermostat, there's a small heater inside the valve that gets warm and actuates a valve stem to open it. when the valve is open, it mechanically closes a set of contacts that turn on a burner and/or recirculating pump or burner relay on the system. You can have many zone valves off one system. Each zone valve will turn on or off the burner when its temperature requirement is met.

In the cold weather a electric water heater with one element heating would be too slow heating the water. You need to have the heater hot all the time and have the room stat turn the pump on and off when calling for heat. This way if it does't keep up he could run another 30 amp circuit to the heater so both elements can heat at the same time through there own stat in the heater. Paul

[Stayouttadabunker]

the room you want to control, does it go into the master thermostat panel? Is there a relay that pulls in when you vary the upstairs thermostat?

No, it goes into a different box called a Zone" panel box.
It has a 24VAC transformer and I think there's two relays.
It's nowhere as complicate as the one I showed everyone here.
That one was for the Cantherm 520.

Anyways, the "Zone" panel box used to run the other 2 red circulators for the 2 slabs.
The old system had the 2 slabs running "parallel" with their own room stats
running to electric hot water valves.
I believe that was the way they "Zoned" the 2 slabs...

I probably should pipe the HOT Lowboy's water into that system instead.
The room stats are already hooked up to those 2 circ. pumps.

[HayZee518]

all the water heater does is heat water. it doesn't care how much it's gonna heat - it just stays on and on to heat water. if you connect another loop to the existing loop it'll just take that much more time to heat whatever the slab's in. may not even work because there's so much volume of glycol/water to heat. parallel it might work but again you got so much to heat.
the room you want to control, does it go into the master thermostat panel? Is there a relay that pulls in when you vary the upstairs thermostat? Does this relay have an extra normally open set of contacts? The 75va transformer you have pictured is the source for all the thermostats in the house. the individual relays turn on or off elements of your heating system [motors, pumps, heaters etc] [controlling devices, not necessarily the devices themselves] a typical hydrionic heating system consists of a zone valve made by the TACO Co. It is installed in the line that feeds hot water to THAT zone. The valve has three terminals on it. When you turn up a room thermostat, there's a small heater inside the valve that gets warm and actuates a valve stem to open it. when the valve is open, it mechanically closes a set of contacts that turn on a burner and/or recirculating pump or burner relay on the system. You can have many zone valves off one system. Each zone valve will turn on or off the burner when its temperature requirement is met.

[Stayouttadabunker]

[QUOTE=HayZee518;46023]don't make this any more complicated then it already is. when you start to swap pump motors for what's on the lowboy, you are going run into more problems. you need to install an inter-posing relay for the room thermostat into the lowboy's panel so the room thermostat will control the pump and heater. that double pole relay that's in the lowboy's panel has a 240 volt coil. the two blue wires that are on the adjustable "stat" with the bulb will need to go across a normally open set of contacts on the low voltage relay coming off the room thermostat. it can get harry! let me do it![/QUOTE]

I agree, I don't want to make it more complicated but I'm not swapping motors - I'm just using the wiring harness from the room stat.

I can leave work early if you want to come out and take a look at it?
Takes me about an hour to get home from work.

I'm thinking of plugging in the other Sun Room slab to this...run it as one loop.
Do you think it will handle 2 slabs on one room stat?
One thing for sure, at 1st, we heated up the dog kennel from over 150 ft away! haha!
You oughta SEE where those pipes went to get there! UNBELIEVABLE!!!
Under the frost line at about 6'-8' under ground!
It handled 33 degrees last night w/one slab but I'm not sure about the minus XX degrees one 2 slabs -
when it really gets cold out soon.

[HayZee518]

don't make this any more complicated then it already is. when you start to swap pump motors for what's on the lowboy, you are going run into more problems. you need to install an inter-posing relay for the room thermostat into the lowboy's panel so the room thermostat will control the pump and heater. that double pole relay that's in the lowboy's panel has a 240 volt coil. the two blue wires that are on the adjustable "stat" with the bulb will need to go across a normally open set of contacts on the low voltage relay coming off the room thermostat. it can get harry! let me do it!