Move thermostat?

[ColdNH]

I have a oil heat with hydronic baseboard heating. my concern is that once I get a wood stove installed it will be located in the same room that the thermostat is currently located. aka the boiler will never kick on because that one room will always be warmer then the rest of hte house because of the stove. leaving the rest of the house cold and risking pipes freezing.

Im just curious as to what others do with hydronic heat?

Has anyone here moved their thermostat? and how difficult of a job is it? Im thinking it may be better to move the thermostat to the master bedroom which is away from the where the wood stove will go. this way the heat will kick on and keep the pipes from freezing.

i miss electric heat already (thats right)

Maybe im better off draining my main level zone water, dealing with the cooler temps away from the stove and just running the hydronic heat on the other zone upstairs?

 

[WES999]

My thermostat is 5 feet from the stove( upper left in pic). l leave it set at around 57 °F, never had a problem. If it gets really cold it will turn it up and let the furnace run for a while. My house is small around 1200sf ranch, and I have another stove in the basement I can run if it is very cold.

Moving a thermostat should be fairly easy if you decide you need to do it, usually it is just 2 low voltage wires.

Also there is a timer you can get to run the furnace for a few minutes every hour to keep pipes from freezing.

 

[thinkxingu]

ColdNH, this is the exact reason I like having electric heat (in addition to the flexibility, lack of air quality concerns, ease of maintenance/replacement, speed, and quietness!) and now that oil has surpassed electric in cost and NG is about the same, price isn't a concern.

In any case, my aunt has the same situation you do and decided to move the thermostat--this worked out ok, but only when she was able to tweak the wood stove room's baseboards to reduce the heating there. I think she had to put in/use a valve to reduce the amount of hot water in that room's system, iirc.

S

 

[rasmussenjohn]

As a electrician I can tell you that moving the stat is only as hard as how much stuff you have to get around. Do not try to install the stat on a exstearer wall as the insolation will make it impossable to fish the wire up. Choose a inside wall. Next you must use the correct wire you can get stat wire at home depot.

You will need a fish tape. Flex bit holder and a good stud finder that will show you if ther is a power line behind the drywall as you dont want to hit that. Also if your house is wired with romex keep the stat wire away from it as the current draw can induct magnetics on the nonshilded stat wire affecting the stat.

 

[ironpony]

personally I think it is a mute point
it would have to get to below 32 degrees
inside the house for an extended period of time
to freeze baseboard heat
I think you would notice that

 

[ColdNH]

personally I think it is a mute point
it would have to get to below 32 degrees
inside the house for an extended period of time
to freeze baseboard heat
I think you would notice that

Well due to the layout of my house, and where the stove will be and the proximity of the thermostat to the stove i dont think the baseboard will kick on at all. Maybe im must being overly cautious but I think rightfully so.

 

[willworkforwood]

personally I think it is a mute point
it would have to get to below 32 degrees
inside the house for an extended period of time
to freeze baseboard heat
I think you would notice that

Well due to the layout of my house, and where the stove will be and the proximity of the thermostat to the stove i dont think the baseboard will kick on at all. Maybe im must being overly cautious but I think rightfully so.

I think you're right to be concerned. The inside of the house could be 70, but if you have any pipes that are situated toward the outside of a wall, they could easily freeze. Yes, no one should build that way, but it does happen. Also, if insulation was omitted in places or pulled out, that's another way to get problems. Just an inch of exposure may be enough to cause problems. As long as hot water is flowing, nothing bad will happen, but pipes with any type of exposure can freeze fast if there is no flow. And DHW pipes can also be impacted by stopping hydronic heat flow (if they have been kept from freezing by having proximity to the heat pipes).

 

[Stephen in SoKY]

Don't move it too close to the kitchen, oven heat can wreak havoc on trying to keep the rest of the house balanced, especially in the summer when using central air.

 

[Giles]

A few years ago, I had a wood burning insert in my living room where the central HVAC thermostat control was located. I simply mounted another thermostat, hooked in series to the original one. I simply drilled a small hole through the wall and mounted the second thermostat in my joining dining room. I would turn one on and the other one off as desired.

 

[billb3]

you don't need to drain any zones

if you have zones they'll come on as needed.

You can always zone the other end of the house or even just one room (like a bathroom) if leaving doors open doesn't work. (it usually does).

 

[jharkin]

When I was a kid, one winter we had one of the hot water lines to the second floor baseboards freeze up one cold night while the old Resolute was cranking downstairs... But that was because the idiot builder ran the pipes through an uninsulated kneewall space.

In a proper install yes your baseboards are mostly run on outside walls, but they should have make every effort not to run the feed pipes inside those outside walls. If you can confirm there are no pipes actually IN those exterior walls you should be totally safe. If you really want to you could have the boiler drained and refilled with a 50/50 antifreeze mix.

In my house we have the thermostat in the stove room. Heat never comes on obviously when the stove is going. No pipes to freeze with steam heat but even if we had hot water I wouldn't be worried as even the coldest room upstairs stays over 65. A larger concern is the basement, but even that stays at 55 with no heat and Ive never had a pipe freeze down there either - Even the bathroom sink lines that are touching the uninsulated sill beam.

SO I really think as long as there are no pipes actually IN an exterior wall and none of your rooms go below the mid 50s you will be OK.

ColdNH, this is the exact reason I like having electric heat (in addition to the flexibility, lack of air quality concerns, ease of maintenance/replacement, speed, and quietness!) and now that oil has surpassed electric in cost and NG is about the same, price isn't a concern.
S

Really? Either your natural gas is unusually expensive or your electric is unusually cheap. My utility (NSTAR) is charging 77 cents a therm this winter. All up with fees and taxes its maybe $1.10. There is no way our electric at 15 cents a KWh (tax included) can even get close to being cost comparable. At this NG price its even hard to justify wood financially if you don't scrounge.

And I don't see where hw baseboards can cause air quality issues?

 

[thinkxingu]

jharkin,
Forced HW doesn't have air quality concerns, but it is much more difficult to adjust heating per room and certainly isn't as fast and balanced with temperature. My t-stats cycle to save power and maintain the room within 1/2 a degree.
As for the money, given that I can individually control my rooms, given the nature of the new t-stats, and given the average efficiency of a ng furnace we pay about the same as people with ng. In fact, my parents, who have an almost identical home with forced hot air, pay a bit more than we.

S

 

[WES999]

Here is the timer I was talking about. http://www.bearmountaindesign.com/
Seems like it would do the job.

 

[Deuce95ci]

I'm an hvac guy, so this isn't new to me. As earlier poster said a fish tape and stud finder a plus, also checking for electrical and plumbing in the walls. A hallway near bedrooms is always a great place to place a t-stat. Not sure if your on a crawl but if you are you should be concerned with boiler lines freezing, as most baseboard is on a outside wall and a crawl is a non-conditioned space.

 

[firefighterjake]

Three zones in my house . . . thermostat upstairs in one of the bedrooms, thermostat in the adjoining room and a thermostat in the room with the woodstove . . . all are set to 60 degrees. I have had no problems with freezing in the three plus years I've run the woodstove . . . generally when the fire goes out for an extended period of time the heat will kick on in one or all three of the zones (and in fact in the Winter it is the sound of the water coursing through the pipes and the sound of my oil boiler kicking on that sometimes wakes me).

As for your question . . . moving a thermostat is a relatively easy project . . . of course I say this after having only moved one a few feet . . . and it was during a renovation when I had the room gutted.

I think if you're worried about frozen pipes (a concern of mine when I first started using wood) I would check the location of your existing pipes (domestic and heating) to be sure they are within the envelope of the house . . . read up on moving head through the whole house with the use of fans (they really do work . . . although I have noticed that when the temp is in the high 70s in the room with the stove, going to a room when the temps are in the high 60s seems very cold -- it's all a matter of relativity) and if you are still concerned I know there is one member here who sells a device that you can hook up to your thermostat to automatically turn on the boiler at pre-set intervals to keep the heat and water moving. I considered purchasing one of these devices, but since I am so cheap I just turn up my thermostats a couple times a day when the temps dip below zero to insure the water is moving and the pipes are heated up for a bit.