Hello all, I recently hooked up a Trane steam/ water heater in my garage. I don’t run it all of the time, just when I am working out there. The problem I am having is it just doesn’t put out much heat at all, the inlet and outlet pipes are plenty hot, and some spots in the fins are hot, but others are cold to the touch. I installed a bleeder on the top(return) fitting, and feel confident I have all the air bled out. Anyone have any similar experience with this?
Trane "steam/water" heater? I have considerable expertise in hydronic heating systems and I have no clue what you are trying to describe. Are you running a steam boiler or a hot water boiler? The heating zone you're talking about sounds like a hot water loop into a forced air coil. Is this correct? Pictures are worth a thousand words.
Yes, sorry about that, a hot water boiler, the heater shows it can be used for either steam or hot water. Have pump pulling from boiler to garage, (approx 30’) heater is just past pump, water returns to boiler after leaving heater, picture included does not show bleeder valve I just installed.
How cold is it there? Or how cold has it been? Possibly a line frozen when you were not using it? It doesn’t take much for the cold to freeze a line solid. Follow your warm pipe until it gets cold. Use hair dryer, or heat gun (carefully) to warm pipe and thaw out.
Has not frozen, coldest we have had is 20s, there is hot water running through entire system, just the center of the heater is blowing cool air and not hot.
Pump speed issue? Shoot the tubes with an ir thermometer if you have one & see what the temp drop is from in to out & across the tubes.
Was the pump running all summer? I've seen sediment that settles in the tubes causing a partial restriction, i would do like what was mentioned above, see the temp drop
Have shot tubes with thermometer, readings are all over the place, seams like a couple of the tubes in the middle of the heater may be plugged up, going to try taking it apart and running vinegar through it to see if it will help
Along with those things your trying, you may try increasing your temperature change to on 160 off 180. Let us know your progress. Always interested in experience. I just changed out a circulation pump last week because the busiest one was making noises I hadn’t heard before and the large buffer tank wasn’t heating up as quickly. The new pump is working and temps seem to be better than before. But I couldn’t find anything wrong with the old one. And outside temperatures are milder. Soooo? May have been build up of minerals/gunk in pump from well water. I don’t know. I kept the pump in case I have a total failure somewhere else. I think I have 9 circulation pumps, system wide total.
