Hot water baseboard heat repair tips & troubleshooting FAQs Set#2:

Frequently-asked "cold heating baseboard" questions and answers help diagnose and fix hot water heating baseboard troubles in your building.

This article series provides common hot water heating baseboard questions and answers that will help diagnose & repair most common heating baseboard troubles including no-heat or leaks or other problems.

Baseboard Heat Diagnosis & Repair Questions & Answers #2

These questions & answers about troubleshooting and fixing problems with forced hot water baseboard heat were posted originally at BASEBOARD HEAT REPAIR. Be sure to review the diagnosis and repair suggestions you'll find there.

On 2018-10-17 by (mod) - baseboards don't get hot water

John

After confirming that the circulator(s) is (are) running, a good place to start troubleshooting is at AIR-BOUND HEATING SYSTEMS

On 2018-10-17 by john

no water going to baseboards. is circulator pump

On 2018-10-17 by (mod) - heat won't stop

Gayle, see CIRCULATOR PUMP WON'T STOP RUNNING

and also see THERMOSTAT WON'T TURN OFF

On 2018-10-14 by Gayle

The baseboards never stop running and it turned down to 1 on the knob and it’s still way too hot in the apartment. Is the baseboards not suppose to stop running once it gets to a certain temperature?

On 2018-10-09 by Anonymous

Only the top of the cast iron baseboard gets hot the bottom stays cold even after I bleed all the air out

On 2018-09-26 by Cheryl Forbea

I think the water was drained from my boiler last summer when i had a well pump switch and water tank replaced in my home.

Now when i turned on my furnace the boiler doesn't get hot. A maintenance man at work said that if there is no heat it's probably a safety check and there is no water in the system to heat. So how do i add water to the boiler?

On 2018-06-20 18:28:21.072264 by Anonymous

R the copper lines in the base board full of water when not beginning used

On 2018-01-31 17:56:55.768936 by (mod) -

Matt

If the battery light is flashing you probably need new batteries in your thermostat
OR
the main power source - the low voltage transformer - is OFF - that in turn could mean that power to your heating system is off as well.

A good place to start troubleshooting is at

NO HEAT - BOILER https://inspectapedia.com/heat/Heating-Boiler-Diagnosis.php where we give a sequence of steps to follow and things to check.

On 2018-01-30 19:36:42.838523 by Matt

My thermostat is set at 20 degrees, but the room is at 14 and won’t heat up. The battery light is flashing, but display is still lit. Any tips?

On 2018-01-26 22:02:35.433175 by (mod) -

Cheryl,

I cannot tell from your question how your hot water is made. If your hot water is made by the heating boiler that also Heats your home, it is possible that your aquastat control is is not correctly adjusted.

On 2018-01-26 19:21:17.718447 by Cheryl

We have hot water heat but our shower when we turn the shower on it gets hot and then it gets cold. What could be the problem

On 2018-01-25 16:17:25.186348 by (mod) - You cannot easily add fins to the existing baseboard tubing without disassembly

Yes, Katie, replacing solid copper piping with finned copper tubing will increase the heat output of the baseboard.

You cannot easily add fins to the existing tubing. Rather that section is cut out and replaced with finned copper tubing of the proper type (thin-walled copper) that has the fins already in place.

On 2018-01-25 10:04:21.851495 by Katie

Recently purchased a house with baseboard heating. One of the rooms is not heating satisfactorily. Half of the baseboards in this room are missing the fins entirely.

Question, if I installed fins on the baseboard pipe would the room heat better? Are fins needed to radiate more heat?

Thanks,

Katie

On 2018-01-20 14:50:19.855576 by Tony

Dan, just wanted to clarity that it was me posting. Did not include my name in the last post. Wanted to avoid any confusion.

On 2018-01-20 14:49:19.278169 by Anonymous

Hi Dan,

There is no knowledge of pesticide use according to the building management. I did notice however after going through this site extensively that adhesives can give off a smell.

There is carpet in that room. It is the same carpet throughout the entire apartment. Living room radiator gives off no smell of any kind. Only the bedroom rad.

When I was blowing it out with compressed air a lot of the tin foil and black paper backing came off.

Do you know if this will damage the radiator or the wood that was behind the tin foil and black paper?

The foil and black paper seem to be there to deflect heat out of the rad. I have blown out a great portion of the foil and black paper. The smell has decreased quite a bit but is still present.

Do you know if this foil or black paper can degrade over time and give off any kind of odor? I imagine those components would not have been placed in the inside of the cast iron base board rad if they gave off any smell under high heat. But then again this is a very old building and I do not know how many years those materials last before they break down.

Did I damage the rad or reduce the efficacy of it? Now when I look inside it is mostly just wood. Can the heat damage this wood over time and be causing this smell?

As for the carpet. I am suspicious of the carpeting and perhaps the padding underneath. If those are heated that could explain the smell.

Thank you Dan for your time and feedback. This sort of thing is very frustrating because it forces me to sleep in my living room indefinitely. Until this smell either burns off or some solution arises.

On 2018-01-19 17:11:38.297034 by (mod) -

Tony

It sounds as if you're describing cast iron heating baseboard. That heating system does not, of its own accord, give off smells.

But spills onto any heated surface, or heating of nearby odor emitting materials can give off smells. Simply trying to burn off an odor might work for some spills but for others it makes sense to inspect the run of heating baseboard to see what's being heated up and thus smelling.

Look at the building history. For example, if someone sprayed pesticide along walls and floors near the baseboard that could give off a smell when heated.

On 2018-01-18 23:23:13.924552 by Tony blew dust off of baseboards

I have the old water radiators which look like base board rads but are do not have fins rather a solid steel plate that heats up with air holes at the top and one opening running the bottom of the entire rad.

This is a bedroom rad that has not been operable for over 10 years

. Last summer the building sent a plumber to fix this. Plumber was able to simply open the valve

. When the heat first started in early fall there as a faint burning smell which went away after 1 day.

When the cold really kicked in and heating was increased that bedroom radiator started to smell very bad.

Like a burning smell. I could not sleep in the bedroom for 1 month one. My living room radiator which is the same type. Released no odor or smell at all. But that one has been operable the last 10 years every season.

I tried methods that some suggested on the web.

To burn the smell out but closing the door and window. To let heat build up to full and then air out once a day. This has had very little effect over the last 5 weeks. Where some have claimed that within 10 days the smell would be gone using this method. So far I am still using this method but the smell is not going away.

I did check for leaks. There are no leaks at all.

Plumber said to try the following :
I tried putting water through.

Using paper towels to catch the water coming down. This had no effect on reducing the burning smell.

I just rented a compressor and blew out not only dust but the tin foil and a black paper which sat behind the tin foil. Some dust came out from the sides of the rad.

When I blew air up into it. The dust came out from around the rad. Almost from behind and around its enclosure.

The tin foil is there to push the heat out. I blew it out because it kept coming out.

The smell now is better but there is still an faint burning smell. I am at a complete loss here because I do not know what else to do. I tried everything that the plumber suggested and the smell is still there although much less after I blew it out and forced out the tin foil and the black paper which was sitting behind the tin foil.

Any tips on what can be done to fix this problem?

This is not a baseboard water rad with fins and enclosure that can be opened and cleaned. My radiator is solid steel on the outside. Cannot be opened up. Has air holes at along the top and one opening spanning the entire bottom. It looks similar to the pic just above with the green wall. Mine is similar to that. One solid piece. Water radiator powered by a boiler running hot water.

I would really appreciate some help or feedback with this. Have tried any step I can think of.

Am at a loss now in terms of what it can be. I don't think it is mold. As that would smell even when the rads are off. It is something in there.

Either dust or the tin foil or the black paper behind it could be breaking down and releasing this smell.

So much of that tin foil and black paper came out. Along with a lot of dust from both left and right sides of the radiator when I blew up and inside from the bottom. Seemed like it came out from around the rad. I tried doing the same thing to other points along the rad no more dust came out.

I blew air through it for about 4-5 hours.

As paper bits and tin foil bits would still emerge. So I did not stop the process until I got all of that out.

The only tin foil left is at the top of the rad where these openings are. It looks like it is there to redirect the heat out. I can try to manually remove these with pliers.

But am not sure that will do anything to help reduce the smell.

I hope someone here can give some insight into this. Am running out of options. Thanks for your time.

On 2018-01-08 23:30:54.232365 by (mod) -

Richard

From your note I infer that you've already tried to look for a manual or automatic air vent that is leaking in reverse: when the heating system cools air can be drawn into the heating piping.

Before tearing open walls to look for leaky heating pipes I would

1. be darn sure that all air has really been removed from the system

2. one by one check each air vent or even temporarily seal it off

3. snoop around with a moisture meter along the base of walls if you have heating pipes running in those walls; also snoop for moisture at the ceiling wall juncture below such areas if that's accessible; Infrared or thermographic scanning can also sometimes spot leaky hot water even when it's not showing up as a stain or wet spot.

On 2018-01-08 01:18:10.830686 by Richard

I keep getting air in the lines of my baseboard heating. The guy who installed my boiler told me he believes it's a cracked or multiple cracks in the pipes. Very small though. Basically I have seen no water damage so I can't figure out where the leaks are. I had pipes freeze years ago and that's when I had this problem start. We found the main leaks but still have this problem. We've tried adding chemicals to seal the leak and we are still having problems. So my question is after all we tried it seems the only option is to literally tear apart every wall to find the leak/leaks. Is there a way to find the leak's without destroying my house?

On 2018-01-01 22:52:36.252889 by Lisa whooshing sound in gas fired boiler baseboards

Help!!
I've just rented a barn of a town house with an open floor plan. It has gas hot water baseboard heating and what a believe is a 4 zone (but I do see 5 pipes coming out of the boiler).

The living room area has one baseboard running along the complete front of the living room and another smaller one under the window at the far end of the room in the dining area next to the open kitchen.

It sits over the boiler room in the garage area.

The kitchen has a 2 smaller baseboards at the far end basically installed in an L shape next to a patio door and under a window on the adjoining wall.

There are 2 thermostats, one for air conditioning on a short far short LR wall that separates the kitchen from the LR/dining area. The thermostat that controls the entire LR/DR/kitchen heat area is located in a small hallway around the corner from the air conditioning thermostat.

This latter thermostat rarely gets over 68 degrees no matter how high it is set and often drops a degree or 2 during the day and evening. Because of this and the fact that builder's plumber obviously had limited skills, (2 of the zones sound like machine guns going off when boiler kicks in.

I realize I'm stuck with this sound unless he knocks down ceilings to repair it) but in my bedroom, there was a whooshing sound every 20 minutes or so. In addition, the thermostat didn't always respond as did the one in my family room. The inferior plumber came in and supposedly drained the pipes of air and nothing changed. He returned again and supposedly drained the pipes.

The whooshing has stopped but my biggest problem of the downstairs area maintaining thermostat heat has not been resolved.

FYI, the radiators are on but not necessarily hot (I'm sensitive to heat and can easily touch them) but when they are in a mood to respond to the thermostat increase I can hear a click at which point the heat rises but rarely to the thermostat setting or my desired temperature. When the thermostat (which was not programmable) stopped responding to my attempt to increase the heat, thinking if I turn it to 90 it would kick in, instead I watched the heat decrease from 65 to 64, I finally called another plumber/heating co.

He had me turn all the thermostats off and then on again one by one and told me there was no problem he could determine. He also assured me that after he left, the main floor area thermostat which was now set to 70. would eventually reach my desired temperature of 68 from the 66 it was registering, but to give it 2 hours.

He also suggested I replace the main floor, bedroom and family room thermostats and buy thermometers to place around the main floor area to see if the temp matched the thermostats. 1 3/4 hours later and just before I left the house, the temperature dropped to 65.

Three and a half hours later on my return it had returned to 66. I reset it to 75 and about 5 minutes later I heard the heat kick in. An hour later it was at 68 and 2 hours later it had again dropped to 66. I heeded heating guy #2's advice and the three thermostats were replaced on December 30.

Today, although set at 68 the temp registered 64 degrees. 1 1/2 hours later it hadn't moved. I turned it off and reset thermostat to 76. the radiators remained warm but not hot. I reset the new thermostat to 90 and the temp reached 65 and has remained at 65 until just 5:15 ( 5 ½ hours later) when it hit 66.

Below are the previous suggestions and explanations I have received to solve the problem:

-It's cold out so don't turn down the thermostat below 64 degrees at night so it doesn't have to work so hard to reach the set temperature. I haven't but it doesn't seem to matter as it rarely hits target temp.

-The small dining room heater doesn't come on because it's right over the boiler room. But the end of the room heater does come on because by the time the hot water runs to it, it has cooled and so it responds.

(FYI, it does not necessarily do so all the time.)

-It will take longer to reach thermostat setting because of the outside temperature. (Should it take days?)

-The baseboard heater at the end of the room is insufficient for the space. (Only comment that makes sense to me).

-Leave the door open to my office which is about 7 1/2 feet away from the main thermostat and is on a separate zone and thermostat and works perfectly.

(This way I can get the temp on the thermostat to raise without actually getting any actual increased heat into the room. I do believe they think I am the village idiot)

-Give it 3 hours to meet its target temperature. It will. (It didn't and hasn't)

Because the landlord and plumbers are treating me like the village idiot and telling me there is no problem when I am living one, I have been keeping a heating log since December 17th.

FYI, there appears to be only a small relationship between the outdoor temperature and the time it takes for the thermostat to reach the set temperature - when and if it does. I’ve never been able to get it over 69 degrees. For example:

outside temp 38 took 5 hours to move 8 degrees;

outside temp 43 took 2 1/2 hours to move 5 degrees;

outside temp 41 took 2 hours to move 6 degrees;

outside temp 34 took 2 hours 10 minutes to move 8 degrees;

outside temp 22 took 10 hours to reach 68 - thermostat was set to 70 degrees.

I don't know if it's helpful but I just came across the Whirlpool Air Handler instructions and the model # is either WAHU or WAHM 065937400. Any potential solutions you can possibly provide for me to pass along to the next heating person would be gratefully appreciated. Thanks so very much for providing this valuable service.
Lisa

On 2017-12-31 18:34:06.331826 by (mod) -

Jean, you want to


1. check that when you set the room thermostat well above room temperature the gas boiler turns on, flames ignite and continue to burn

2. that the circulator is running

3. that the system is not air-bound

Start your diagnostic steps in detail using this article COLD HOT WATER BASEBOARD / RADIATOR https://inspectapedia.com/heat/Cold_Radiator_Repair.php

On 2017-12-31 14:52:39.171993 by Jean

We have gas hot water baseboard heat. The unit is turning on but the baseboards are not heating up. Suggestions?

On 2017-12-30 02:20:23.745962 by (mod) -

Yes it is normal; heat typically flows (hot water) through a loop of baseboard sections. So the first section - that closest to the heat source - will be warmest, and the last section, that most-distant from the heat source will be coolest.

On 2017-12-30 01:42:06.113617 by Kristin

I live in a one bedroom apartment. There is a baseboard heater in the open kitchen, one in the open living room and one in the closed bedroom

. Each are showing a different temperature. Is this normal? They are all off by 3 to 4 degrees from eachother and are all controlled by the same thermostat
Thanks

On 2017-12-27 21:07:36.453891 by (mod) -

Excellent question, Erhard.

Indeed if a leak occurs while a building is unoccupied the damage can be significant, depending of course on where the leak occurs and where water goes. And yes, some leaks can cause loss of heat and freeze-damage.

But there is not one "Right answer" to preventing damage, rather:

There are two approaches WINTERIZE - HEAT ON PROCEDURE - https://inspectapedia.com/plumbing/Winterize_Heat_On.php

and WINTERIZE - HEAT OFF PROCEDURE https://inspectapedia.com/plumbing/Winterize_Heat_Off.php

Take a look at both of those procedures for detailed advice.

On 2017-12-27 17:52:38.876327 by Erhard

What do you recommend for a long absence during the winter. Is it best to shut off the water supply to the house? What would happen if there were a leak, the water would run out, but the gas would still try to heat water while the electric pump would still work and create a "run away system"?

On 2017-12-24 20:08:00.048931 by (mod) -

Anon

If all of the heating baseboards or radiators are on the same heating zone then the piping may be air-bound. See
COLD HOT WATER BASEBOARD / RADIATOR https://inspectapedia.com/heat/Cold_Radiator_Repair.php

On 2017-12-24 19:56:54.147118 by Anonymous

Getting heat in one section of house but not other

On 2017-12-19 01:07:18.724265 by (mod) -

AUTHOR:Cindy (no email)

COMMENT:This 45 year old building has fin baseboard heating. Every time I turn on I get dizzy and flu like symptoms I'm on the top floor of 4 storey building. The soldering which is a continuous line along the top of the pipe appears to be pitted and some parts cracked and have fallen off. It's making me very sick.

On 2017-12-10 02:28:10.222540 by (mod) -

Edw

You need to find a plumber - most are familiar with installing baseboards and also with bleeding out the air after the heaters are reinstalled.

On 2017-12-10 01:47:26.759193 by Edw

I have a central heating hot water system with cast iron baseboard radiators in the basement. In order to gain complete access to the wall behind the radiator where seepage has occurred, I need to disconnect the radiators and moved them.

Once the crack is repaired, the radiators will be re-connected and returned. My problem is I don't feel comfortable doing this job myself. Contractors that I have contacted are only interested in tuneups, repairs or new systems. Can you help me find a contractor able and willing to do this job?

On 2017-12-08 01:20:02.760076 by Cheri Ferrari

We have a downstairs boiler room with seasonal storage in it. The boiler gets annual maintenance. Would this room be safe to put 3d printers and associated electrical/electronics to run them in there for my husband's business??

On 2017-11-29 21:20:49.728205 by (mod) -

Sally,

In a properly working forced hot water system the pipes and boiler are completely filled with water and you'd not expect a gas leak.

However in a system that is air-bound or that does not have adequate air venting, air can accumulate in radiators, baseboards, piping, eventually blocking the flow of hot water - the symptom will be cold baseboards even though the boiler is chugging away and the circulator is circulating like mad (or at least running like mad).

Now, in the unlikely event that you had BOTH an air-bound hot water heating system AND a leak out of that air at a bleeder valve or other point, that air is often smelly and might be, speaking loosely, referred to as a"gas" .

But a more general answer to your question is no.

On 2017-11-29 20:48:24.019527 by Sally

Can gas leak from forced hot water baseboard heating system

...

Continue reading at AIR-BOUND HEATING SYSTEMS or select a topic from the closely-related articles below, or see the complete ARTICLE INDEX.

Or see these

Baseboard heat repair articles

• AIR BLEEDER VALVES for how to find and operate those cute little controls on baseboards (or radiators)
• BASEBOARD HEAT REPAIR - home
  • AIR-BOUND HEATING SYSTEMS
  • BASEBOARD HEAT DAMAGE REPAIR
  • COLD HEATING RADIATOR REPAIR (hot water / hydronic heat)
  • LEAKS at BASEBOARD, CONVECTOR, RADIATOR

Suggested citation for this web page

BASEBOARD HEAT DIAGNOSTIC FAQs4 at InspectApedia.com - online encyclopedia of building & environmental inspection, testing, diagnosis, repair, & problem prevention advice.

Or see this

INDEX to RELATED ARTICLES: ARTICLE INDEX to HEATING BOILERS

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