Manual control of alternate heating system on Nest thermostat

[Garkr26]

Hi, hoping for some help here on how to manually control our alternate heating source with the Nest Thermostat. We have both heat pumps and oil fueled radiators in the home (an old home that came with the oil and radiators and the heat pumps we added to have central AC and forced air heating). We live in NJ so need to rely on the radiators in winter. When the heat pumps were installed, the HVAC techs set up our Nest Thermostat with the dual fuel breakpoint setting so that the radiators will automatically turn on if the temp is less than 50 degrees. However, I haven’t figured out how to manually turn on the radiators at any other time that I’d like. For example, our furnace service tech was here today for the annual tune up and asked that I turn on the radiators so he could test the furnace. Now that we have the Nest, I couldn’t figure out how to control the radiators independent of the setting that would trigger them to come on automatically at a certain temp. Does anyone know how to manually control the radiators for the set up I’ve described? Thanks!

[GabrielaG]

Hi @Garkr26,

Thanks for reaching out to the Google Nest Community. I understand that you need help with manually controlling your alternate heating sources, specifically heat pumps and oil-fueled radiators, with your Nest Thermostat. I'm glad to help you. 

To provide you with accurate troubleshooting steps, please help me out by answering the following questions:

• What type of Nest Thermostat do you have?
• Are the boiler and the heat pump connected to the same control board?
• Can you please send me a picture of the Nest Thermostat’s wiring? 

Any additional details you can provide will be helpful.

Regards,

Gabriela