Thermostat control

I am not sure that I understand what you have written but I think you do have a problem with the heating system. if you set the therm to heat it should call for the furnace to turn on and deliver heat. If you are getting cold air then someone needs to check the pilot light or thermocouple on the heating unit. Be sure that your therm is set properly to HEAT and not FAN. On fan you will have a constant fan operation with heat coming on fron time to time.

Good luck

Thank you for responding. I will try to be more clear in stating my problem: I am in a building with either Heat or Air - as set by the management. An example of the problem is last night when it was warm when I went to bed and cold (44 degrees) when I woke up. Before going to bed I set the thermostat on HEAT and AUTO and 70 degrees. No air was coming from the vents. When I got up, cold air was pouring from my vents. The boiler in the building was not working so the building had no heat, but I had very cold air coming in even though my thermostat was set on HEAT. I would like to have no air coming in when my thermostat is set on HEAT and the building has no heat. Is that unrealistic? The maintenance people have changed my thermostat 3 times and I continue to have this problem - cold air coming through my vents when set on HEAT when the boiler is not working. I appreciate your help.

From what it sounds like you have no problem with your thermostat, it is not uncommon for high-rise residential buildings to have a central boiler, and supply individual fan coil units with hot water when heat is necessary. There are many other schemes,vav' s with hot and cold decks, etc. the commonality is many buildings are utilizing an energy management system, to control their central heating plants, and many building owners are penny pitchers and their tenets comfort suffers.

From what you related I'm assuming that the heat works sometimes and other times it doesn't, if this assumption is right you probably have nothing wrong with your HVAC unit, and it is a building problem.

My best advice would be to record the temperatures in your unit, so that you have any objective temperature to show, a saying in the industry is we can control temperature but we cannot control and individuals comfort. Having real numbers to show them would probably be helpful, instead of just saying I'm cold.

Assuming that your heat is centrally supplied hopefully you can persuade management to adjust their system, their system is probably operational on colder mornings for instance, so if you cannot persuade them to adjust their energy management system, you might consider buying a cheap electric heater for those borderline mornings when there's no central heat available.

My problem is cold air coming into my apartment even though my thermostat is set on HEAT. If heat in the the building is not on, should ANY air be coming into my apartment when my thermostat is set on HEAT? Sorry if that's a dumb question, but this is really a problem.

What floor do you live on? Do other tenants have the same problem? The farther from the heating unit you are the less heat you will get. Also have the maint people ensure that the thermostat is wired correctly.

Hello hops1x:

If your system is what I think it is, the thermostat probably only controls the blower motor in the air handler, and possibly a water valve on the coil. The thermostat has no way of knowing if the building heat is available or not.

In answering your question there should be air coming out any time you're thermostat is calling for heating or cooling, assuming that the boiler is down what you are feeling is ambient air being recirculated, along with some additional outside air supplied for air change. So it is quite possible that the air exiting the supply registers is actually cooler than the temperature in your apartment.

If you could tell us if you get heat at times that information would be helpful.

As far as this condition being normal for these types of buildings as suggested in another post, I would just say it can happen in these types of buildings, and is usually the result of the building management being overaggressive in their attempts to save energy, or a malfunction in the energy management system.

Energy management can be anything, from a complete computerized system, to a simple thermostat sensing either outside or return air temperatures. Properly adjusted A comfortable temperature level is easy to maintain, barring extremely rapid temperatures changes, in which case AS the guest poster mentioned the system can be temporarily overwhelmed, and slow to recover.

Your building sounds like you have a cantral plant supplying hot water and chilled water to terminal units which are small air handlers in each unit. There are many ways to control these air handlers depanding on the type. But a very common and simple way is a stap on aqua stat in series with the units fan. If heating hot water is not available the aqua stat remains electically open. Aqua stats are usualy adjustable, someone may have change the setpoint. It would be stapped on your heating hot water piping somewhere near the air handler.

In the UK the air would be supplied by a fan coil unit connected to a central boiler. The fan coil unit would have a thermostaic switch on the coil to hold the fan off until the coiol temperaure reaches at least 140oF, so the question may be,has the switch been shorted out by maintenance or has it welded closed?

This is a problem of a simple air heating system, probably badly installed and/or wired. In a reasonable system, as soon as one of the apartment owners requests heat, the boiler should switch on. The initial air will be cold, till the boiler has warmed up.

The problem is that you do not know when the boiler will be on or not, neither does your control!!

A simple solution is to have a timetable as to when heat will be available, if for some reason it will not be available 24 x7 in cold weather.....follow the timetable.

A small extra refinement would be to have your thermostat control also on a time switch, so that it only requests heat when heat is available......

Basically you have an apartment with a cheap and "stupid" control system.....maybe you need to get the building management to upgrade it a little!! You are probably not the only one affected, club together!!!

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOUR THERMOSTAT OR THE BUILDING HEATING SYSTEM. THIS IS COMMON AMOUNG OLDER SYSTEMS THAT WERE INSTALLED IS HIGH RISES.

1. YOU PROBABLY HAVE A TWO PIPE SYSTEM. MEANING THE BUILDING CAN EITHER SUPPLY HEAT OR COOLING TO THE ENTIRE BUILDING NOT BOTH AT THE SAME TIME. SO WHEN A COLD FRONT COMES THROUGH THE ENTRIE SYSTEM MUST BE SWITCHED FROM COOL TO HEAT. THIS TAKES TIME AS WELL AS THE BIOLER HAS TO TAKE TIME TO HEAT THE WATER. THUS YOU HAVE YOUR DELAY OR THE BUILDING ITSELF MAY DETERMINE THAT IT IS NOT NECCESSARY TO TURN THE HEAT ON FOR THAT SHORT OF A TIME.

2. THE THERMOSTAT IN YOUR RESIDENCE DOES NOT TURN ON THE BOILER OR COOLING. IT SIMPLY SENSES THE AIR TEMPERATURE OF YOUR RESIDENCE AND DETERMINES IF THE FAN SHOULD TURN OFF OR ON.

Sounds to me like you need to speak to the management. If its getting that cold they should have the boiler turned on.

In simplest terms. What I think may be happening is your thermostat is telling the fan to turn on at 70 or below. So when the temp went below 70 the fan turned on, since the boiler wasn't fired up it was just circulating cold air. Had the boiler been fired up and working it would have been warm air. A more sophisticated system would work the way you want it to. The thermostat would only turn on the fan when heat is present just like a single family house unit would work. But if you are in an older muti-family building I doubt if they would have bothered with updating the system. Figuring that when heat is needed everyone would want the heat on and therefore warm air would already be in the system. And then no problem.

Your system will work fine as long as the managment turns the heat on in time for the need. Again I would contact the management and tell them to fire up the system. Your paying your rent so you should be comfortable in your own dwelling. They're just trying to save themselves some $ and thus more profit by not turning it on.

I would think it would be quite reasonable to have a representative of the building explain how the system woks and help you get the controls set properly. Once that is done, if the problem persists, it seems there is a problem that, depending on the terms of your lease they should fix. -- JHF

Lots of good replies so far. I once lived in an apartment building with hot water heat, but only one thermostat on the main floor in the hallway. If it got too hot, you had to open the windows. Then the manager set the thermostat to reduce the temperature at night. He lost a lot in tenants before he got smart and set the thermostat to stay the same temperature all the time. If you can't get results by talking with him, the solution is to move somewhere else.

I really thank you all for responding to my problem. I think I understand now that the thermostat simply causes the fan to be On or Off. When set on HEAT and the temperature in my apartment drops below my 70 degree setting, the fan will, and should, come on blowing in whatever the building system is providing. If the building is not providing heat, I will get a steady stream of cold air because the thermostat, set on HEAT, is trying to get to the 70 degree mark - and the cold air makes that impossible so the air continues to blow in. Right? I live in an older 12-story building so will set my mind to accepting this. Again, I thank you - can live with what I know cannot be 'fixed'.