Heating Conundrums (the end?)

The heating saga is now resolved. Not 100% to our satisfaction, but pretty close. 86%?

To quickly recap, the pipe loops that lead into and out of our bedroom were re-routed to run directly into (and out of) the boiler. The logic for the move was that since the pump on this loop appeared to be pulling so much water through the loop, the loop was to be moved to largely separate it from the rest of the system.

The problem was that after many hours of work, the bedroom still wasn't heating up. Even with its pump running. Also, the pump on this moved loop was very loud - it sounded like air was constantly flowing through. More on that later.

After the plumber left I spent about an hour bleeding all of the accessible bleeder valves. After pulling out a lot of air, the house was getting plenty warm, except for the bedroom.

What was strange was that the return pipe on the moved loop was getting warm while the feed was still ice cold. Which has two possible explanations: either this really isn't a loop or that the water is flowing the opposite direction we are expecting. I still don't know the answer.

What I did do was take advantage of a new lever.

This lever allows me to control whether the hot water flows vertically into the main loop (which feeds the entire house excluding the basement and master bedroom) or flows to the left, eventually into our bedroom. I ran the system for over an hour, the entire home was warm except the master bedroom. I left open the bedroom bleeder valves for several minutes to try and encourage the hot water, but was rewarded only with cold water.

I then went back to the basement boiler, turned the new lever, forcing water into the bedroom. I immediately heard water rushing into the feed, turning the feed pipes from cold to scalding hot. I turned the lever back to the original position. I went upstairs and our bedroom now had scalding hot water.

Thinking that this was just a temporary pulse I left the heat to run for another hour and periodically bled from the master bedroom valves. An hour later, still hot! So, I guess I fixed it?

I was hoping that the pump would stop being so loud after I got the water flowing into the feed. But it was still loud. I spoke with our plumber, who thought that the pump may be bad. He came over and replaced it with a new one - which made just as much noise. I tried disconnecting the pump to see whether it needed to be running to get hot water in the bedroom - it does.

So we are claiming victory now. It's a bit annoying to hear the raspy pump running, but it's only audible from the dining room/kitchen. It's worth the noise pollution to get heat EVERYWHERE. Winter, we are ready.

Old Bleeder Valves