For Residents
Problem in your building? Start here to get help.
If you have an emergency or need assistance after troubleshooting, contact us to request service or get help anytime.
No heat? Too hot? Troubleshoot Heating Issues
Check if your heat is working
If your heat doesn’t seem to be working, try this before requesting service:
- Thermostat
- Ensure it’s set to HEAT (if it has that setting)
- Check the room temperature shown on the thermostat — make note of it in case you have to call in.
- Turn the thermostat all the way up (to 30C)
- Radiators
- Wait 5 or 10 minutes, then feel the baseboard radiators. Are they hot, warm, or cold?
- If the radiators are hot, the problem may not be the heating system. Make sure the radiators are not blocked by drapes, furniture, or other objects.
Don’t block your radiator
If you have radiators in your unit, don’t block them. The only way for heat to reach your unit is through the radiators. If you cover a radiator or have drapes or furniture too close, it can get cold quickly.
We also advise against curtains or blinds that run from the window to the floor over the baseboard heater. These act as a conduit for cold air — dropping it directly onto the piping and increasing the chance of a freeze up.
Maneuver the louvers
If your baseboard heater is has adjustable louvers, make sure they’re fully open.
We find radiators with closed louvers on many service calls — correcting this is often all that’s needed to get the temperature up again.
Ensure that the radiator fins are clean and gently straighten any that are bent.
Exercise your zone valve
If the zone valve is stuck open, there will be constant heating. If it’s stuck closed, there will be no heat.
Exercising your zone valve can help to solve and avoid no-heat or too-much-heat issues.
Don’t call your electrician
If there’s a heating problem in your unit, contact us or your building management to get it fixed. Most electricians aren’t trained on low-voltage control systems for hydronic heating and won’t be able to help.
Don’t install a smart thermostat
Smart thermostats like Nest or Ecobee are made for single-home heating systems. In a multi-unit building, the thermostats and heating system interact differently to call for heat and manage temperature in your unit. Installing a smart thermostat may result in intermittent heating problems or no heat at all.
How to Exercise Your Zone Valve
What is a zone valve?
Most condominiums have radiant heating systems — baseboard convection radiators provide heat from the flow of hot heating water.
The thermostat in your unit regulates the temperature by opening and closing the “zone valve” to turn the flow of heating water on or off.
How does the zone valve get stuck?
When it’s cold outside, the zone valve is regularly opened and closed as the thermostat regulates the temperature in your unit.
In the Spring and Summer the thermostat is often set all the way down or off, and the zone valve is left in the closed position.
After sitting idle for a few months, the zone valve can become stuck in that closed position.
Then when it gets cold again and thermostat is turned up, the zone valve can’t open — it’s “seized” — a very common heating failure in condo units.
What to do if the zone valve is stuck
If your zone valve has seized up you may be able to free it by “cycling” your thermostat — turn it all the way down for a few minutes, and then all the way up for a few minutes. Repeat this cycle several times and see if the heat returns.
Exercising your zone valve to prevent seizing
Regularly opening and closing the zone valve in warmer months helps to ensure that the zone valve doesn’t seize in one position.
Our recommendation: once per week in the Summer, turn the thermostat all the way up for a few minutes. Then turn it down again.
If your condominium shuts the boilers off in the Summertime, you can do this without affecting the temperature in your unit. You could turn the thermostat all the way up one week and all the way down the next.
We can’t promise that you’ll never need to replace your zone valve, as they do fail from age or wear, but this simple exercise can increase the useful life of most valves by years and prevent an unnecessary repair bill in your suite!
Prevent Burst Pipes: Avoid Winter Freeze Up
During Winter weather we receive many emergency calls for no-heat, leaking zone valves, or burst heating pipes.
While some of these calls are caused by a fault in the heating system, many of them are a result of stuck zone-valves, improperly set thermostats, open windows or patio doors – any of which can result in thousands of dollars damage that is typically the responsibility of the unit owner.
At Prevent Mechanical, as our name implies, we want to help you to avoid unnecessary repairs and you can — just by following these few simple tips…
1. Exercise your zone valve
In the Summer, exercise your zone valve to prevent it from seizing in one position. When it gets cold, a stuck zone valve can quickly lead to leaks and burst pipes.
2. Don’t leave windows or patio doors open during cold weather
During the holidays, large gatherings of family and friends can raise the temperature in your home — literally.
12 people in one space is like a 1500W space heater running full blast. Combined with the oven running for five hours to roast the turkey, you might feel the need to open a window or patio door to cool the room down.
If you do that, take care to close that window or door as soon as possible.
Why? Because leaving a window or door open in cold weather can quickly freeze up the heating system — leading to a burst pipe and extensive water damage.
The radiator is designed to compensate for the heat lost through walls and closed windows — not the massive amounts of heat lost through an open window or door.
3. Don’t set your thermostat too low during cold weather
When it’s cold outside, it’s critical that the thermostat is not set too low, or off.
During cold weather (outside temperatures colder than -5°C to -7°C), keep your thermostat set to at least 20°C. A lower temperature setting can allow it to close the zone valve, completely stopping water flow through the radiator.
If the zone valve is closed, the water in your unit’s heating system can freeze in as little as 15 or 20 minutes, causing burst pipes and extensive water damage.
During cold weather there is enough heat-loss through the windows to create a cold air current: down the wall, below the window, and over the radiator.
The radiator is designed with fins that efficiently transfer heat from the pipe to the air, but they also work to transfer that cold current from the air to the pipe.
Prevent Clogs: Drain Maintenance
Prevent Mechanical would like to help save unit owners and tenants the inconvenience and expense of unnecessary service calls due to clogged drains.
Like most owners, you already know what not to flush or put down the drain. But there’s more you can do to prevent clogs and drainage issues.
Tenants can perform monthly sink and tub drain maintenance using household vinegar to break up and flush built-up sludge.
One of the simplest and most cost-effective ways of preventing clogs is to use household vinegar as part of your regular cleaning schedule.
Pour one or two cups of white vinegar down each drain (sink and tub) in your home and let it sit overnight. Then rinse it the next morning with very hot water.
The vinegar helps to break up any sludge that may be accumulating in your drains and the hot water helps to flush it away.
Vinegar is inexpensive, it’s eco-friendly and it’s not harmful to your plumbing pipes or fixtures. You can do this as often as once-a-week, but just once-a-month will really help to prevent clogs from building up.
In residential buildings, we schedule and perform regular stack cleaning to prevent slow drains and limit excessive pressure on the drainage system. There are few things worse than a burst drainage line.
For commercial buildings, we can develop a customized drain maintenance program including the necessary auguring, treatments, and monitoring to prevent issues before they start.
Carbon Monoxide Safety
Every year, often in the Winter, we hear about someone in a condominium or apartment tragically losing their life to “the silent killer”: carbon monoxide (CO).
Carbon monoxide poisoning causes an average of 300 deaths per year in Canada. Compounding this tragedy is the fact that it can be prevented for a very low cost.
If you’re a property manager or on a board of directors, please take the time every Fall to ensure that the properties you’re responsible for have safeguards in place to protect occupants from CO poisoning.
Here are a few examples of protective and preventative measures:
- Designate a person to inspect the building’s air intake grills on a daily basis for blockages caused by garbage, ice, or hoar frost. Clear as required.
- Install hard-wired or battery-operated carbon monoxide detectors in every hallway. Ideally, detectors should be installed below the air discharge grills.
- Encourage all homeowners to install carbon monoxide detectors in their units.
- Every year, confirm that the carbon monoxide detectors in your parkade are tested and certified.
- Confirm that all the exhaust fans and make-up air units your parkade are working, in combination with the carbon monoxide detectors.
- Ensure that all combustion equipment, boilers, hot water tanks — and especially hallway or parkade make-up air units — are serviced, cleaned, and inspected every year.
- Ensure that units with in-suite mechanical rooms are inspected annually, including a check for venting separations and breaches.
If you’re entrusted to care for properties, these few measures help to ensure that your buildings’ occupants are safe, and that you’ve met your due diligence and duty of care.
For assistance with carbon monoxide protection and prevention in your building, please contact us.
Request service 24/7 or learn more about working with us.