Thermostatic radiator valve

[balboni]

I recently had my basement finished and there were three hot water radiators installed and hooked up to the existing boiler that heats the radiators upstairs. Unfortunately, it's still 4 to 5 degrees cooler in the basement than upstairs. This may or may not be due to the fact that the radiators downstairs are not big enough. I think that the radiators could in fact heat the downstairs if the boiler was on long enough. I was wondering if there is a way to have two thermostats hooked up to the boiler along with a valve that would put the boiler and radiators in one of the following 4 situations:

1. Boiler on - downstairs and upstairs radiators receiving heat
2. Boiler on - downtairs radiator receiving heat, upstairs radiators not receiving heat
3. Boiler on - downstairs radiators not receiving heat, upstairs radiators receiving heat
4. Boiler off

I believe this would be called zoning. Is this possible?

[Mark]

or you can put a fan in front of one of the radiators which will effectively increase the size of the radiator.

Mark

[Heathcliff]

I did that years ago when I had an underheated apartment. I just put a regular window box fan blowing on the radiator and wired it using an attic fan thermal switch. The switch was placed on the radiator and would cause the fan to go on when the radiator temperature went above the switch's set point, maybe 110 degrees or so. In other words, radiator on, fan on, radiator off, fan off. Worked pretty well. Of course you could work up a more elegant solution using a computer cooling fan or some such. Having airflow on the radiator gets a lot more heat out of it.

[Mikepier]

How many zones does your boiler have? It sounds like you have just 1 zone. If thats the case you would have to zone off the downstairs seperately by adding on a circulator pump or a solenoid valve after you isolated off the basement pipes. You also need a thermostat and a control box. Could you give us a little more info?

[balboni]

As far as I know, the boiler only has one zone. I was hoping that some sort of three-way solenoid valve would do the trick (upstairs open, downstairs open, both open) but I haven't been able to find any info on that. Would I need a valve on both the supply and return lines? What sort of control box would I need.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Yes, sort of. They may be plenty big enough if they were on an separate zone. Is it ossilbe to damper down the upstsairs heaters to force it to take longer to heat totaly? Not as good as a zone, but a cheap solution.

Yes. Can be done. This is the best way to handle situations like that.

[Mikepier]

First you would need to isolate the basement zone from the upstairs by redoing the plumbing. Next you have either 1 of 2 choices. Get the solenoid valves and put them on each zone. Or get an extra circulator pump and put it on the basement zone. You will also need a control box to interface the basement thermostat to the new circulator pump. You don't need valves on both supply and return sides. Just on the supply side.

[m Ransley]

Cheapest would be more radiators in the basement. Is it baseboard, or a mix of the two, between upstairs and down stairs. Large cast iron will get you the most BTU. This is what happens when you don`t have a pro do a load calculation and you are guessing. Best would be excess capacity and a valve to allow you to manualy reduce flow-heat. Do your floors have or will floor have carpet, that and foam padding will help a little.

[Goedjn]

Replace your radiators with a couple of these:

[m Ransley]

The problem with the Duo Rad is if he has large cast iron upstairs he will have uneven heat, sure it will get warm but cast iron will radiate heat for an hour, the Duo Rad stops when the pump and fan shut off. Best is the same radiators as he has upstairs and proper btu output. Mix output types and often a new loop , pump and thermostat are needed to achieve a balance. I have cast iron, someone remodeled a room took out the cast iron and put in units similar to Duo Rad. Heat was bad always till we put back in the original cast iron. Mix and you can Mess up. That is where a pro is good to figure it right the first time.