Baseboard Hot water sytem Valve wiring.

[bill]

Will try and keep short. Came home to a stone cold house. It being only second year in house and not even remotely familiar with system i called in outside help. He said my valve switches were bad, honeywell recall had expired, and said he could not replace just switches, but entire valve's. Total over $300 parts alone.

I have access to electronics so i ash him to somehow wire me a bypass if possible. He did and that works. I have replaced switches but he wired bypass when i was not looking, and dont want to call him back out for $85 and a 2 minute job. If im am not mistaken, he wired one thermostat directly to power.

Link to pic's and explained.

Very first pics shows 2 valves the way they are wired NOW after bypass. Valve on left is only one that had any rewiring done on it, thats upstairs or main, one on left is downstairs and secondary.

Second pic is close up of left valve

Third pic sideways (sorry) but just to show wiring he did, see spliced red and white wires

Pics 4 and 5 same. He plugged in his bypass to this transformer. I can switch these back without problem.

The actual question is i have one read and one white wire to reconnect to left valve, but not sure where to reconnect, can only guess red wire goes to bottom middle on value, but if thats correct, where does white wire go???

[buffalobill]

looks like both zone valves in your pictures are in the manually open position as determined by the lower mechanical lever on each. this would suggest that both zones get heat off any thermostat all at once.

sorry i don't understand what you are trying to bypass unless it's a bad thermostat on one of the zones.

[RBM]

The switches in question are end line switches that are used to fire the boiler. If I were you, I'd replace the entire zone valve(s) with Honeywell valves which have replaceable parts . Zone valve wiring tends to be a complicated mess. Let him or someone else do the entire job and ask to explain the wiring to you. The sequence is something like this: Thermostat calls for heat, sending 24 volts to it's respective zone valve- when valve completely opens, it closes end line switch which closes circuit to aquastat relay on boiler which fires boiler. Boiler runs until thermostat is satisfied or reaches high limit

[Mikepier]

If the zone valve was bad, what did he bypass? Its already manually bypassed as Buffalobill mentioned. Is your repairman talking about somethinmg else?

[bill]

Yes you are correct. Both are open because we needed to heat both sections, temporarily, via one thermostat. I need to reverse this, putting them back so that there are two zones for two switches. I'm not trying to bypass anything, per se. It was done as a temporary fix until we could get a two new switches. Now we want to restore it to the original, proper configuration. One zone per valve. Does this make any sense?

[bill]

Zone valve not bad, switch within zone valve assembly was bad. Both switches on both zone valves are bad. He said , after checking model numbers that my valves were within a bad set sent out by honeywell.

[Mikepier]

RBM (remove this) wrote: : Thermostat

OK now it makes sense. I have not dealt with these valves in a while. Its wired this way to ensure that the boiler does not fire up until the valve is opened. Then what your repairman did is bypass this end line switch out of the circuit so the boiler can fire up. Plus it was necessary to manually open the valve. RBM is correct, you should have both valves replaced.

[Mikepier]

I'm not sure if I understand, you already replaced the switches yourself? Or the entire valve?

[RBM]

The only function of the end line switch is to start the boiler. They are used if the boiler is wired for "cold start" Some boilers, like ones with hot water coils built in, are "maintained temperature" boilers and use a triple aquastat relay, which has a low temp cut in and a high temp cutout, so they maintain a tank of 180 degree water

[bill]

Correct: i have replaced the switches.Having a background in electronics i wasnt about to pay $150 per entire valve assembly when i knew i could buy switches for $4.50 a piece.

I downloaded honeywell's valve wiring circuit diagram, but its greek to me. I have model 8043

But back to :

2nd pic down, i think i would connect red to lower middle connection point and white to far left connection point. Those wires already connected have 24 volts coming over them.

Which brings me to another question. While taking voltage readings and such, is it normal for the type configuration to have 2 24 volt supplies??

Go to forth pic down: he told me to reconnect this wires to current spots, just removing his bypass:

I should have stuck to electronics and computers , they are actually much simplier.

Mikepier wrote:

[RBM]

There are at least two separate 24volt power supplies. One, is a separately mounted 40va transformer to power the zone valve motors, depending on how many you have, you could have more than one transformer, and the other, which is the one you need to be concerned with, which is built into the relay, who's "TT" contacts you need to connect your switch wires to

[Mikepier]

It's hard to tell from your pics what exactly is bypassed, but the Honeywell wiring diagram looks straightfoward. The thermostat should be connected to the bottom left and bottom middle terminal. The power supply should be connected to the bottom left terminal ( along with 1 leg of the T-stat wire) and the bottom right terminal. Now for the end switch terminals the wiring diagram says it goes to the circulator. I am assuming it goes to a relay box first which closes the circuit to activate the aquastat/boiler and circulator. Is that where the wire goes, to some kind of relay box?

[bill]

Thanks. Im going to try this when i get home tonight, you have answered my question, but you last question " I am assuming it goes to a relay box first which closes the circuit to activate the aquastat/boiler and circulator. Is that where the wire goes, to some kind of relay box? "

Has left me in left field and the lights are off. I will write again after trying this tonight

[Mikepier]

bill wrote: " I am assuming it goes to a relay

What I mean is the end switch terminals closes a circuit. If it does go to the circulator, then it must go to a relay box first because the end switch is 24V, and the circulator is 110V, so the relay box simply takes the 24V completed circuit from the end switch to pull in a relay which in turn activates the circulator. However you might have a different setup. The end switch might just complete the circuitry for the boiler to start up. In this case it is

24V.

[bill]

About RBM's reply, thanks for your contribution to hopefully solving my problem, I'll write again after i try it tonight, but in reply to your message, i dont think i have that type setup. I say that because i often see my temp gauge drop to below 100 if unit hasnt kicked on in a while.

[bill]

Thank you both for all your help. Did what i had to do and reconnected those wires. Set valves to auto and than turned on basement heat, worked fine, new switch works like a champ. Did not get a chance to fire up upstairs because temps spiked yesterday and it did not get below 73 in the house yesterday. Within a day or 2, we will be back in the 30ies again, but not expecting any problems with that one either.

Thanks again for all your help.

Bill