My house was constructed about 2 years ago and has a hydronic heating system that uses fan coil units to distribute the heat. I have 5 thermostats distributed around the house. They are all 2-pole line voltage tstats.
If the tstat is "Off" neither the fan operate nor is the boiler activated to heat the water. If the tstat is "On" but below (even well below) the room temperature the fan never turns on BUT the boiler is constantly heating the water and the water is constantly pumped to the fan. This is grossly inefficient as even when the house has reached its target temperature the boiler is still working. Until I noticed this my energy bills were 3 times what they are now!
I would like to install a programmable thermostat to set up a heating schedule but I anticipate this will not prevent the core problem with the boiler always being on.
Is this system working the way it's supposed to? All 5 thermostats cause the problem (i.e. if any of the 5 aren't "Off" the boiler is on). It seems extremely inefficient and I have a hard time believing this is intentional. Since each fan also has a on/off switch on the wall it would seem much better to just leave the fans "on" all the time and have the boiler kick in when the temperature falls below the setting. If I reversed the line/load wires in the thermostat could I accomplish this? Is that safe to do?
The ideal solution would seem that BOTH the boiler and fan be activated when the temperature falls below, and NEITHER is on when the temperature is above. How would I accomplish this? In researching thermostats I've not read about any that seem to deal with this problem.
Thanks all for your help!
If the tstat is "Off" neither the fan operate nor is the boiler activated to heat the water. If the tstat is "On" but below (even well below) the room temperature the fan never turns on BUT the boiler is constantly heating the water and the water is constantly pumped to the fan. This is grossly inefficient as even when the house has reached its target temperature the boiler is still working. Until I noticed this my energy bills were 3 times what they are now!
I would like to install a programmable thermostat to set up a heating schedule but I anticipate this will not prevent the core problem with the boiler always being on.
Is this system working the way it's supposed to? All 5 thermostats cause the problem (i.e. if any of the 5 aren't "Off" the boiler is on). It seems extremely inefficient and I have a hard time believing this is intentional. Since each fan also has a on/off switch on the wall it would seem much better to just leave the fans "on" all the time and have the boiler kick in when the temperature falls below the setting. If I reversed the line/load wires in the thermostat could I accomplish this? Is that safe to do?
The ideal solution would seem that BOTH the boiler and fan be activated when the temperature falls below, and NEITHER is on when the temperature is above. How would I accomplish this? In researching thermostats I've not read about any that seem to deal with this problem.
Thanks all for your help!