Heating Help

installed my first magna

The results were much better than expected; it replaced a waaaaaay oversized UPS32-160F. You could hear it howling like a ghost throughout the entire building and there was no delta T on the supply & return. I gave them a quote on replacing it last winter but they said it was out of their budget at the time, it finally crapped out after about 4 years in service about 3 weeks ago so it became a necessity being a town hall in a small hamlet about an hour away from my own. I generously estimated the head of the system at 16ft. @35gpm but it turned out to be much less than that as you can see in the pic. It's pumping through 1-1/4" convectors in wooden cabinets throughout the approx 10,000 sq ft building. It usually draws less than 32watts and has cost about $2 to run over the last few weeks, compared to the old circulator's 625watts (on speed 3 which is what it was on lol!) I figure they'll have a yearly savings of about $300.

Alpha?

Hi Zac,

I'm glad you are able to save your client $$$ and quiet down the building.  I failed to see how you overestimated the head and gpm from the picture since I only see wattage.  If the head and gpm are that low, could you have gotten away with installing the Alpha?

possibly

Looking at it now, I probably could have. Though at the time of failure my perception was warped by the fact that that there was such a monster pump on the system and just the somewhat large size of the system in general (2" mains & 600,000 btuhs of boilers). Because of these factors I doubted my math and played it safe. Live & learn I guess.

hmmm

An alpha can't do 32gpm though, but I might have been OK with the smallest Magna, the 32-60. Meh, splitting hairs though, this is leagues better that what they had.