Failed Honeywell CH valve motor replaced on 2 Oct. That motor failed about
14 days later and was replaced today, 23 Oct. I'm assuming that the first replacement really was a brand-new motor, and not one that had already failed from another customer and been accidently fitted in mistake for a brand new one.The valve itself was easy to turn, so it hadn't jammed and caused the motor to draw more current because it couldn't turn.
They are stall motors on most valves so will stall when in operation.
They are actually small synchronous mains motors and cost next to nothing.
Y plan valves have switches to turn them off when in the middle I think, I have never actually bothered with those things.
You can buy two port valves with switches to turn them off at end of travel but they cost more than the stall motor, spring return valves.
Trouble with spring return vales is they are noisy when they close..
Correct.
£9.99 delivered (the other day).They don't turn them off, they reduce the power to them via a micro switch, diode and resistor to provide a 'holding current' and without magnetising the motor.
I can tell. ;-)
Cheers, T i m
I'm not sure if there any that work like a solenoid but the return spring jobby I have in my hand right now is near silent in operation (both ways).
Cheers, T i m
We had one which suddenly started clanging very loudly; SWMBO got someone in while I was away - could't find a fault, I replaced the valve and it was better. This summer I fitted a motor open/motor shut, did a bit of rewiringb and it's now all quiet.
There are 2 types, motorised & solenoid. The latter are cheaper & noisy. AFAIK both use spring return.
NT
It wouldn't matter if it was jammed. They are synchronous motors and the limit switch is only for feedback. In normal operation they run and drive the valve open and when it reaches the end of travel the motor simply sits there, energised, but stalled until the power is removed and the spring pulls it closed.
SteveW
Odd. When power is removed, it usually takes a couple of seconds for the valves to close. The spring pulls on the mechanism, but the mechanism has to drive the unpowered motor round. The high gear ratio means that there is a lot of drag. The slow closing means that they are normally quiet (a slight whirr and a virtually inaudible bump). We have 9 of them, mostly over 16 years old, and none make a noise.
SteveW
On the Honeywell diverter valves there is a mid position that uses magic to hold it there. ;-)
Cheers, T i m
I had one that failed, but when I got it off I noticed that there bas black muck aroound a ceramicc twist on connector thing. I took it off anbd te wires fell apart.,
I soldered them together, put the ceramic cap on with a blob of glue and its still working...
Spring return ones don't clang, it may have had a broken gear segment.
A third type has motorised open and return but the wiring is slightly more and they cost more. They are quiet.
I think mine is the third type. It has a little slide lever on the housing which is spring-loaded. If you move it you can feel that it is making a shaft spin at high speed. There is no indication as to whether it is opening or closing the valve, and it seems to take about two movements of the lever to go from fully closed to fully open and then another two to go back to fully closed. It would have been so much more useful if the motorised housing had had an indicator that changed between "closed" and "open". I presume the valve is rotated by the motor in one direction only and can go from "open" at 0 degrees and 180 degrees, and "closed" at 90 and 270 degrees.
In order to heat the part of my house that was controlled by that valve, I had to manually move it to the "open" position (as determined by feeling the downstream pipes when the boiler and pump were running. I then had CH which was controlled by the thermostat of the other CH zone or by the HW thermostat - so if *either* was on, the zone with the dead valve got hot. Rather than keep wriggling through the absurdly small "fairy door" that gives access to that part of the loft, we used the individual radiator valves to regulate the heating until the CH engineer could come out to replace the valve.
One interesting thing. I gather that these valves are turned on by the programmer and thermostat in series both being turned on. This moves the valve to the "open" position which also turns on the power to the boiler and pump via a logical OR arrangement: if any of the Zone 1 CH, Zone 2 CH or HW valves is open, boiler and pump are turned on; boiler and pump are turned off only when all three valves are closed. However although the dead valve was getting power, it was not sending a permanent enable signal to the boiler and pump even though it was in the "open" position. So not only had the motor stopped working but also the boiler-enable wire was also not working. That was a good thing, because it would have mean that the boiler was running all the time that the programmer was "on", irrespective of the Zone 2 and HW thermostats. (*)
Thankfully normal service has been resumed and the two zones are each once again controlled by their own programmer and thermostat.
(*) I noticed that the electricity consumption (which I read every few days while we are getting used to the vagaries of our new house) was excessive. I'd thought it was due to the CH motor running all day long (apart from overnight), until my wife said "damn, I forgot to turn off the underfloor heating in the kitchen" (I remember her switching it on). I think *that* was the cause of the excessive electricity usage - everything is back to normal now we've switched it off. Memo: change the master switch for the underfloor heating either to one with a light which is on all the time the heating is switched on (independent of the one that lights only when its thermostat calls for heat), or else to a programmable timer which only allows the heating to be turned on for a few hours before resetting to the "off" state.
yeas - I replaced ac spring return one this summer.
so obviously the 1st type
they aren't as simple as closed & open. they don't swing anywhere near 180 degrees.
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