Circulator wiring

[oldcpecdr]

Hi all

In the main house I have a Weil/McLean Boiler runnin ga hot water baseboard system with 4 zones controlled by 4 zone valves with one Taco circulator.

All the heat zones work fine BUT... the circulator is on constantly 24/7... is that normal ?

What should I look for? Circulator wiring info on the net is scarce...the power wires are currently hooked up to a Honeywell Controller and wired to the C1 and C2 connections marked circulator.

Any info would be appreciated !!!!! Thanks !!!!

Mike B

 

[rlitman]

What model circulator do you have? Some (variable speed) are meant to run all the time, some (like a Taco 007) are not necessarily.

 

[oldcpecdr]

What model circulator do you have? Some (variable speed) are meant to run all the time, some (like a Taco 007) are not necessarily.

It's a taco 07..

 

[pstnbly]

Circulator should only run when the end switch on the boiler is closed, something is wired wrong.

You would be suprised by how many bad wiring jobs boiler installers do. My SIL just had a new W-M gold boiler installed with a hot water coil, the boiler would not make hot water on call unless there was a heat call, aquastat was not wired in.

 

[rlitman]

Yup, something may be wired wrong. It's not healthy to run that circulator with no flow.
If it is running when all four zone valves are closed, something is wrong.
Could be miswired, could be that one of the zone valve end switches got stuck. Could be that the zone valve itself is stuck.

 

[oldcpecdr]

Thanks for the thoughts. Tomorrow will just go down and start tracing all the wires and seeing just what they did...unhooking the wire runnning to the circulator relay on the aquastat from the end switches shuts off the circulator...thinking it is probably wired wrong or bad zonevalve end switch.

 

[pstnbly]

After tracing the circuits you may want to look into adding a Taco SC501 single zone circ controler. Daisy chain the zone valve end switches together, run them to the Taco 501, there is an end switch in the controler to fire the boiler, simple. (This assumes a single circ is on the system, other Taco controlers are available for multiple circ systems)

 

[oldcpecdr]

Sure enough a bad end switch on one of the 20 year old Zone Valves...cost an extra 20.0 at the Depot vs the net.... but it's fixed and working well...

the circulator control board mentioned above looks like a MUCH better solution than the wiring mess I straightened out today....

Thanks all

Mike B