Hi,
My husband & I just bought a triplex this past August & neither of us have experience with oil/hotwater heating. As the owners, we pay the heat for the whole building.
I'll try to explain our dilemma as best as I can.
There are 3 apartments, topfloor 4 bdm, our main floor 4 bdm, & a small 1 bdm in the basement. Each has it's own zone valve however there are 4 thermostats. the fourth one located in our livingroom seems to be connected to the upstairs control. I believe I can see what temp they have theirs set on up there & our heat in 3 rooms seems to be controlled by them.
The other rooms in our place are controlled by another thermostat located in our bedroom. We have been trying to figure this all out since October. The heat did seem to be working alright until last week when we felt we were going through an awful lot of oil ($700 in 17 days!) We once again called our local furnace "experts" who came over & turned up the min/max temps on the furnace. He said that we were using so much oil because the max temp was too low & it took the furnace extra oil to heat it back up. I really dont understand all this but apparently when I told my husband what he said he said that the previous "expert" had said the opposite!
So, the next day after all had been adjusted by that expert, it became so hot that we could barely breathe! Down we went to look at the furnace again. There are the two things to adjust the min/max temps but there's also another thing above those that was set on 220 degrees. We turned that down to 160 & the next day nearly froze. Turned it up to 170 that night & were fine that night but the next day, nearly froze. Again turned it up to 180 & were OK that night but nearly froze the next day. Turned it up to 190 & now we're dying of heat yet again!! We haved turned the thermostat down to 45 degrees F & it is still kicking out heat. We even turned the thermostat to "cool" & it's STILL kicking heat. We're really at our wits end! Not only are we paying a fortune for oil but we're paying 60$ an hour for some idiot who seems to know no more than we do to come over & turn this or that.
My husband went to the basement & we communicated by phone as we turned the thermostat up full then down all the way. The zone valve did not respond at all.
Is there a website that explains how the system works with diagrams so we could try to figure it all out? Do you think the zonevalve may now be broken? whatever advice you could give would truly be appreciated at this time. I apologize for the long winded explanation but I wanted to be sure you could see what's been going on here. Thank you so much, Pam
My husband & I just bought a triplex this past August & neither of us have experience with oil/hotwater heating. As the owners, we pay the heat for the whole building.
I'll try to explain our dilemma as best as I can.
There are 3 apartments, topfloor 4 bdm, our main floor 4 bdm, & a small 1 bdm in the basement. Each has it's own zone valve however there are 4 thermostats. the fourth one located in our livingroom seems to be connected to the upstairs control. I believe I can see what temp they have theirs set on up there & our heat in 3 rooms seems to be controlled by them.
The other rooms in our place are controlled by another thermostat located in our bedroom. We have been trying to figure this all out since October. The heat did seem to be working alright until last week when we felt we were going through an awful lot of oil ($700 in 17 days!) We once again called our local furnace "experts" who came over & turned up the min/max temps on the furnace. He said that we were using so much oil because the max temp was too low & it took the furnace extra oil to heat it back up. I really dont understand all this but apparently when I told my husband what he said he said that the previous "expert" had said the opposite!
So, the next day after all had been adjusted by that expert, it became so hot that we could barely breathe! Down we went to look at the furnace again. There are the two things to adjust the min/max temps but there's also another thing above those that was set on 220 degrees. We turned that down to 160 & the next day nearly froze. Turned it up to 170 that night & were fine that night but the next day, nearly froze. Again turned it up to 180 & were OK that night but nearly froze the next day. Turned it up to 190 & now we're dying of heat yet again!! We haved turned the thermostat down to 45 degrees F & it is still kicking out heat. We even turned the thermostat to "cool" & it's STILL kicking heat. We're really at our wits end! Not only are we paying a fortune for oil but we're paying 60$ an hour for some idiot who seems to know no more than we do to come over & turn this or that.
My husband went to the basement & we communicated by phone as we turned the thermostat up full then down all the way. The zone valve did not respond at all.
Is there a website that explains how the system works with diagrams so we could try to figure it all out? Do you think the zonevalve may now be broken? whatever advice you could give would truly be appreciated at this time. I apologize for the long winded explanation but I wanted to be sure you could see what's been going on here. Thank you so much, Pam
