can't get air out of hot-water radiator system

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Blumengarten

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my tenant left the garage door open in zero-degree weather, and one of the radiator pipes in the basement busted (because he hadn't turned on the thermostat to the basement because he was too cheap and didn't want to heat it!!). So air got into the system. I got the pipe repaired and hot water is circulating nicely through the basement but not upstairs.

Radiators in the living room and kitchen are cold, bedrooms and bathroom are hot. These are baseboard heaters. Only one radiator has a bleeder valve on it. I went over there yesterday while he was at work, sitting next to the radiator bleeding it into a pan ... all day long. Every so often I'd hear some air hissing out of the radiator, so it's slowly coming out. Since the radiators in the front two rooms are cold, I know there is an air bubble in there ... I have lived in houses with hot-water radiators my entire life and I "just know."

Even my husband who, to satisfy the tenant, called a furnace guy, and he said the same thing. The tenant doesn't believe that the plumber could diagnose that over the phone when he hasn't even been in the house, but I asked him, did he ever call a doctor and give him your symptoms over the phone, and he wrote you a prescription, even though he never saw you? Experts don't need to "see" the problem to "know" what it is! He doesn't believe me. He wants me to have the plumber come and check the furnace. There is a gurgling sound in it. My husband says that's because air's in the expansion tank. The plumber said to rattle the pipes every so often to help the air move to the bedroom with the bleeder valves.

We told the tenant to crank the heat up in the basement and keep the basement door open, then heat would come through the floor and the door and warm the house. He's objecting, saying it would send his gas bill through the roof. I disagree, the boiler will only heat the water to a certain point, the thermostat controls the frequency with which the pump sends hot water through the pipes. The tenant kept turning the thermostats OFF all weekend because he didn't want to pay for gas he wasn't using. The plumber said we have to keep the thermostats on so the pump will keep circulating water and helping us get the air out.

During the day while he was gone, I set the thermostat to 80 in both the basement and upstairs, it never got near that even in the basement (the thermometer said it was 56 so even though the pipes are hot, it's not getting as hot as it should).

We had to replace the pump because of the water running all day Friday. We didn't have a plumber do it, we just put it in ourselves, wasn't difficult ... the tenant is of course thinking that the fact that we put in the pump ourselves is part of the problem.

Sorry for the long letter, but I thought I'd give you all the info. Here are my questions:

1. Is there any other way to get rid of the air in the pipes other than to bleed them? This summer we can drain the system and put bleeder valves on the other radiators but obviously we can't do that when it's zero outside.

2. Do you think there might be something else the matter with the furnace/pump? Or would we have to wait until the air is out of the system anyways to check it?

Thanks,
Blumengarten
 

DougB

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If not all radiators have a bleeder... You need to shut off the radiators except one. You need to force makeup water through the 'loop' , and bleed off the water at the return by the furnace. You'll probably have to bleed 5 - 10 gallons. Repeat with the other radiators. You may have to do it more than once.
 

Blumengarten

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If not all radiators have a bleeder... You need to shut off the radiators except one. You need to force makeup water through the 'loop' , and bleed off the water at the return by the furnace. You'll probably have to bleed 5 - 10 gallons. Repeat with the other radiators. You may have to do it more than once.
Thanks, we FINALLY got the heat in all the radiators ... someone from Minnesota would surely know about stuff like this! Thank you! (I do feel like a bled at least 10 gallons over the past two days).
 
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