I have four heating zones in my house. I recently had an Energy Kinetics Accel system installed with storage tank for domestic hot water.
When they did the installation, they added a new valve at the boiler; the existing zone valves are southbound of that. To the Accel however, it appears there is only one zone. The four thermostats in the house are wired to the four existing zone valves.
This *works* but I don't think I'm getting all the benefits of the system as I understand them.
As I understand it, if I call for baseboard heat in one of my zones, it will trigger the boiler to kick on and open both the valve at the boiler and the valve at that zone. But once the thermostat has been satisfied, it will close the zone valve. The system will then try to purge the heat out of the boiler into the storage tank and/or the last zone that called for heat. However, based on the way it's wired, if the storage tank is at temp already, the system is just gonna be pumping hot water around my basement instead of back into the house because the zone valve will remain closed. Right?
Doesn't this also mess with the Smart Boost/Energy Setback feature? I have one zone in my house that will need a lot more heat than others due to number of windows, etc. I don't understand this feature as well, but I thought the system could be smarter/more efficient about heating different zones that have different needs.
↧