My Taco is Ticking

[Wes]

Hi there. This forum has helped me out before so I'll try again.

I have oil baseboard hot water heat. Two zones. Taco zone valves.

Zone 2 does this when activated:
Tick...........Tick.........Tick.......Tick...Tick TickTickTickTick
pause 15 -30 seconds
Tick...........Tick.........Tick.......Tick...Tick TickTickTickTick
pause 15 -30 seconds
Tick...........Tick.........Tick.......Tick...Tick TickTickTickTick
pause 15 -30 seconds
Tick...........Tick.........Tick.......Tick...Tick TickTickTickTick
etc...

This just started this season. My first thought was air in the pipes.

Oil service guy just came out to clean furnace. I also asked him to bleed the zones because of ticking. The ticking did not go away.

Next thought is contraction of pipes as it heats up. This doesn't make sense to me because this would only happen on heat up/cool down, not continuously. I took off the baseboard cover and "played" with the pipes to see if it was against a stud or something like that. No effect.

So I go to the furnace and notice that the ticking is coming from Taco area.

I fidget with the Taco powerhead for the zone. I twist it about 1/8" inch. The ticking STOPS mid tick cycle.

A day later the ticking is BACK.

SO, I SWAP the two powerheads. The ticking is still there on the same zone. So it's not the powerhead.

It would appear to be the valve.

Has anyone heard of this? What are your thoughts?

thanks
Wes

[jadnashua]

This is a total guess since I've not torn one of them apart...maybe the valve is sticking and it's the clutch slipping since it didn't get to the stop when it was powered to open the valve.

[Wes]

That would make sense.

WD-40 it?

[jadnashua]

If this is it, and as I said, it is a guess, I think you'd have to replace the valve body unless you were lucky and could clean it out. See what the pros have to say, they deal with these things, I don't.

[nhmaster]

Sticky valve body, ignore it.

[Wes]

I took off the power heads. Sprayed the valves liberally with GT85.

No more ticking! I could sleep last night! Hopefully this lasts a while. Next step would be to replace the valve.


(GT85 is like WD40 but with a higher oil to solvent ratio).

Thanks for the help.

[nhmaster]

something with a lithium base will last longer