Boiler temperature setting question (2025 Update)

It's between 17 f and 27 f in the daytime and 5 f overnight. I am a newbie here. I don't know if I got this right but I think the size of the boiler and the heating surface should be fine because I remembered standing on hot tiles in the kitchen when the thermostat was calling for heat,last winter and the house was warm.. As for the circulating pump, it was hot when I felt it so I think its working properly? The pipes are like "ouchy" hot when I felt them but when I was standing on the kitchen tiles, the surface only felt lukewarm. It used to be very warm before.

The pump should be running because it's hot and water in the pipes feel hot too. The thermostat is constantly calling for heat.

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com於 2019年2月6日星期三 UTC-8下午8時44分54秒寫道：

The radiators or the heating surface (not sure what it's called) are not hot, only lukewarm.I googled before I asked for help here and I was thinking it might be the air in the system, but as I am still learning about the whole heating system, I wanted to make sure all the temperature settings are appropriate. Are they?

Just because the pump feels hot does not mean it is running. The hot water will make it feel hot even if it is not running. The water pipes should feel uniformly warm. If they are much warmer near the boiler and cooler away from it, you may have a circulation problem. Is your system one zone, just one circulator. You may want to invest in a low cost point and shoot Thermometer from eBay.

Water in the pipes where feels hot? A foot from the circulating pump or

Yes, sounds like a circulation problem. Either low on water or the pump is not working. It will feel hot but you should hear it actually turning and moving the water.

Maybe, maybe not.

Your terminology was a bit vague. Are you using a recirculating hot water system which pumps heated water into baseboard heaters?

If that's the case, then...

a: if it's older than 20 or so years (in other words, "dumb"), then yes, the piping should feel hot.

b: if it's newer and "smart", it will be designed to (in loose terms) throttle up or down depending on how much heat it thinks is needed.

In the old days, if the outdoor temperature was (numbers made up) 50 degrees and you wanted 70, the boiler might only come on, at _full_ strentgh, for five minutes out of a half hour. But when it was on, the radiators would be hot.

If it was zero outside, the sytem might be on for 25 minutes out of each half hour.

Nowadays, there are units that will cut back on their output, based on the outdoor temperature and other factors.

So taking that 50 degree outside temperature, instead of the boiler running at full capacity for five minutes/30, it will cut down to 10 percent output for 25 mins/30.

The advantages here are better efficiency and less thermal shift in the house.

HOWEVER, that calculation is based on some magical calculations based on what the different thermo-sensors are reporting.

So... if you have a newer/smarter unit, there are plenty of other things that could be going wrong.

As the folk in alt.hvac (back when Usenet was a thing) used to say, probably a good idea to have a licensed and experienced technician take a look.