[NewHmOwner]

Hello,

I am a new homeowner and just purchased a townhouse. The house is about 5 years old and has hydronic hot-water heat with wall heaters. There are 5 thermostats in total, one in the 1st floor bedroom, 1 in the first floor hall, 1 on the 2nd floor (living room/kitchen), and 1 in each of 2 third floor bedrooms.

The thermostats are very inexpensive non-programable King thermostats. They have a simple dial - you can see a picture of it here:

KING ELECTRIC - Thermostats - ECONOMY - LINE VOLTAGE: S22 AND D22 SERIES THERMOSTATS - Manufacturer of Electric Heaters and Thermostats, buy electric heater, buy thermostat, wholesale electric heaters, wholesale thermostats, retail electric heaters,

The thermostats don't seem to be turning off the heat in the house when the set-temperature is reached. I purchased a simple thermometer to make sure. Yesterday, it was 66 degrees on the 1st floor, but I had to turn the thermostat down to about 50 degrees to get the heat to shut off. This morning when I woke up, the heater on the 1st floor was running again even though it was 64 degrees down there and the thermostat was set to about 50 degrees. The thermostats in all of the other rooms seem to be doing the same thing. I think it's very strange that all 5 thermostats would be broken.

Any suggestions?

Thank you!
Frustrated new homeowner.

[wmproop]

Yes,, strange it is.sounds like its time to make that dreaded phone call, I`m a thinking you have something other than a thermostat problem. In the long run it would probably be cheaper to get it looked at by a pro. Rather than being un-comfie

[NewHmOwner]

That's what I was afraid of. Have you heard of this before? I'm scared about how much this is going to cost me...

[NewHmOwner]

I spoke with my neighbor and she has the same problem. The only way to get the wall heaters to turn off is to manually turn down the thermostats. You can feel the dial click and then the heat shuts off. The wall heaters are made by Turbonics. Is this possibly due to a thermostat that is not compatible with the heating system?

[NewHmOwner]

Update! I called King-Electric, the manufacturer of the thermostats and I was right - the cheapo dial thermostats do not work with hydronic heat. The helpful fellow at King Electric said that he's heard lots of stories of homeowners with the same problem. They have since designed thermostats specifically for hydronic heat. It's going to cost me a few hundred bucks, but I'm going to get all new thermostats and it should fix the problem.

[lewise]

I saw your posting and was wondering how everything worked out with purchasing new thermostats for hydronic heat. We are having the same problem. Any more helpful info would be greatly appreciated.

[hvac1000]

Instead of BUYING thermostats I would be calling the manufacturer since they originally supplied thermostats that were not compatible with there own equipment causing the problem to start with.

[NewHmOwner]

I ended up contacting the manufacturer of the in-wall heaters (Turbonics) who put me in touch with a local technician. This technician installed 4 different inexpensive dial thermostats and 1 programmable T-stat on the middle floor to act as the "main" T-stat. I am very happy with the results. He said that the cheap dial T-stats have very high differentials and are therefore not very accurate. The new dial T-stats that he installed will turn off the heat, but it has to get about 4 degrees higher than where the T-stat is set. The programmable King T-stat does a much better job. The technician wired the dial T-stats so that they do not control the pump--only the "main" t-stat turns the pump on & off, which I like.

Let me know if you have any more questions!