Heating Help

Gas pipe sizing

@ May 24, 2012 5:16 PM in Gas Pipe Sizing

It is NOT for the consummer to be involved with gas pipe sizing! It is the responsability of the licensed gas piping and appliance installer to provide the proper gas pipe sizing. ANY inference without having an actual site visit is supposition as in court inadmissible! If you did not see the existant and the new, how can can you advise??? As professonls in the field, we are NOT doing a responsible service by suposition!

Lovely install

@ May 24, 2012 4:39 PM in Lochinvar install photos with centro-therm flue pipe

Yes, it is well done BUT, I don't think that your would like to get ge"t no heat calls" next year! Get rid of the neutralizeer cartridge and install a little rubbermaid pot filled with terrazzo stone with an overflow to drain. That neutralliser will pack up in no time depending on the amount of condensate, resulting in a no heat or hot water call.

Been there, amy years ago done that!
Henry

Copper venting

@ May 24, 2012 4:32 PM in Copper Flue piping

I have seen some copper venting in Europe on fireplaces! I have also seen copper condensate drains from vents beign destroyed within 6 moths!
Henry

Pics

@ May 18, 2012 8:12 PM in Posting pictures

I am off to Budapest this weekend. I will send them to you at the end of the month! Some spiffy install!
Have a great weekend
Henry

Combustion air etc

@ May 18, 2012 8:10 PM in Concentric vent termination

Certain boiler manufacturers allow the installer to use the area around a vent for combusiton air with certain specific drawings in their certified I & O manuals. B149.1 will allow that In Canada. I have passed an amendements for a clause, that does not allow say a Cat1 appliance to vent in the space of the chimney when a Cat 2 or 4 vents through it. It is in the B149.10 code. Basicaly, we don't want cross contamination nor do we want a plastic vent in a Cat 1 chimney. As well one cannot use a chase to vent several apliances. each apliance needs to have its own chase!  

Posting pictures

@ May 17, 2012 11:29 AM in Posting pictures

I tried posting a few pictures today. It did not work. I tried one and still did not get posted into my text. Is there a bug in the system?
Thanks

A steam job

@ May 17, 2012 11:10 AM in Treasurer-Condo Assoc

In this large tower in Montreal, we removed one 5,000,000 BTU boiler and installed two 5,000,000 in its location. The boilers were completely assembled by us in place. We lowered the maximum steam pressure to 2 PSI. We installed a digital management system that you can see on the column between the new boilers. There is an outdoor sensor, steam pressure sensor, return temperature sensor and a room sensor on the second floor. The panel controls the full modulating Gordon-Piat burners. The actual fuel savings were over 35% in volume. The building no longer met the minimum annual gas purchases that the utility and building owner had signed for.

Steam to hydronic

@ May 17, 2012 10:57 AM in Treasurer-Condo Assoc

When we do towers that have a steam heat exchanger for the make-up air, we use the steam supply riser as a supply and run a new return. We then install a plate heat exchanger and the old steam heat exchanger is converted to use glycol. It gets cold here: -30F very often. BTW, all piping is steel no copper is used. On a two pipe system, we replace all the piping and install a TRV on each rad. The rare one pipe system, everything gets replaced: rads, pipes etc..

Monoflow

@ May 16, 2012 9:13 AM in replacing heating distribution pipes with pex

We have done several conversions from reverse return and gravity to a monoflow system to increase headroom in the basement. It is the most cost efective method. You should use outdoor reset and have a bypass to protect the boiler.

Please loose the phone number of the numbnut who said to use pex! Be aware that even if you use a manifold to pipe each individual radiator, you can have air pockets with pex!

Infrared

@ May 14, 2012 2:22 PM in Commercial Garage Heat

We have done both. Separate combustion infrared is the best method. In floor radiant in a garage prevents yo from making changes in the floor and could have a negative when you are choosing some floor mounted equipment as you may damage the piping by bolting down the equipment. We have done one infrared gas installation that warms railway cars full of toxic material (mercury, lead etc) from the NY City area. It is sized according to the ventilation load when unloading the railway cars, 25,000 CFM= 2,500,000 BTU, works fine.

We have installed gas infrared in drive through at car dealerships, the mechanics area, bus repair depots, cement plant garage areas etc.. You size according to the space and number of doors. Check with your favorite infrared maker.

Fuel efficiency

@ May 14, 2012 10:01 AM in Treasurer-Condo Assoc

We make a whole lot of $$$ fixing steam systems in both heating aplications and process. I have reduced energy costs on steam heating systems by over 35%. But, steam cannot ever compete with hydronic mod/con. Boiler combustion efficiencies are rated at 0 PSI. Every little bit you go up in pressure, it uses more fuel to get there. The old vacum systems originaly on one pipe were to quickly fill the raidators with steam. The later systems like Trane, were to lower the temperature of steam to make it more comfortable. Both systems utilise MORE fuel for the same comfort level compared to hydronic systems of comparable vintage. How can steam be as efficient as a mod/con? On cast iron systems we get between 35 and 55% reduced energy usage when we switch over to a mod/con. Doing the same with a one pipe or two pipe system, will save more.

We do re-use the old radiators. We don't re-use any of the old piping. Therefore there are no leaks. There are no steam traps to replace nor air vents. We use nearly exclusivly Grundfos pumps therefore there is no maintenance issue as with condensate or vacuum pumps. Also, on the larger systems, there is no need for stationnary engineers. We have one project of $4 million that replaces 4 steam boilers and 4 heat exchangers at four different levels to condensing hot water. 6 statinnary engineers are gone and just that is a $770K saving! Just this past Friday, I was with a hotel chain property manager. We are getting a major hotel off of a central steam system like NY City, to mod/con boilers. The estimate savings are $4 to 5 million annualy! In both cases, why use steam to heat a hydronic network?

Problemo

@ May 12, 2012 9:04 PM in A Venting Issue

Looks liek major problems bsides vent issues. ABS melts at 217F so much higher than PVC. There is a major problem here. We need more pics! Combustion air? Make and model of units!

Major savings!

@ May 12, 2012 9:00 PM in Treasurer-Condo Assoc

YUP! Your are in the same region of our projects. While it is a substantial investment, the payback is so short and the new comfort levels of having LOW temperature heat to counteract the outdoor temperatures, is a plus plus. Use steam to produce use water to heat!  One needs to train people to get steam as efficient as possible but it will NEVER be as efficient as water. We need people to undestand the shortcomings and problems of steam to maintain the existing systems at the best efficiency and comfort level possible using steam. But as professionalls, we must all understand that mod/con is the way to go!

UL

@ May 11, 2012 8:25 PM in Is PVC an acceptable vent material for flue gases?

Actually, it is a North American standard! Just that nobody wants to spend the money to relabel the pipe as S636 because in the US there is no need! There is "no force" as NFPA54 does not require it. The members of NFPA 54 recognise that using the existing various plastic pipes IF installed properly pose no danger to the user. You are right about US pipe manufacturers CYA. They claim that it is not a suitable use so as not to have any liability for incorrect installations and failures. They don't have to pay for certification or relabeling!

Mark, there are no expansion joints available. The installer must take into consideration the expansion of the pipe while installing. If memory serves me right, PVC will expand 4 inches over 100 feet at 70 F rise. The lowest plastic was ABS 1 inch! I have all the expansion rates in my office. I have seen busted fittings due to expansion and incorrect installs!
I have checked my own home PVC vent after 10 years. There was a slight brown discoloration most probably due to Chloride removal. This is something I have seen in an aquatic lab when the numb-nut ING specified sch 80 PVC for a pure water aquatics lab. If the vent was cracked, it sent warm humid air on the wood creating spores and mould for who knows how long. I am sure that no preventative maintenance was done according to the certified manufacturers instructions.

As among other things, a forensic investigator for insurance companies, an expert witness in litigation and a voting member of the National Gas Code and 7 sub-committees, I find Mr George's motive to publish such an inaccurate article as having perhaps personal motives! I am sure that some legal buzzard will use his article to crucifix someone without all the expertise to defend himself! It is very shameful.

Article on PVC

@ May 11, 2012 9:00 AM in Is PVC an acceptable vent material for flue gases?

I read with much interest the article on PVC venting. The writer is very much uninformed on PVC Venting and the standards used for various materials. The 140F that he mentions is for PVC "PRESSURE" rating. IE, at 140F the pipe can support 75 PSI. All the temperature ratings mentioned are for temp/pressure ratings. BTW, ABS pipe only starts to deform at 217F which is superior to PVC.
He also mentions that there are no standards or test procedures for plastic pipe venting. This is false. There is a UL standard called ULC636!
Nearly all failures that we have seen, have been caused by the installer and NOT the pipe. In the other cases, the equipment failed. BTW 600F stack temperature would melt completly the PVC pipe! Cracked fittings are caused by the lack of space for the pipe to expand. At one point our company was using $100K a month of AL29-4C venting material. We have had more problem with this material than any other combined!

The manufacturers have tested all sorts of venting situations before certifying an apliance to use a particular special venting system. We in the code sector ensure that the installations are safe for the user and continuously monitor what is happening  across all of North America to keep it that way.

Great meeting

@ May 7, 2012 9:14 AM in Had dinner with Henry S.F. NachaJ

We had a great time discussing and exchanging ideas. I also learned a few things. You are never stop learning things! BTW, I work for Le Groupe Charbonneau, Quebec's largest mechanical contracting group and we don't do ventilation! Right now, we run over 250 employees. You may visit our website www.plomberie.com There is an English version for each company and some pictures. Due to the latest software upgrade by our website host, the formating of the text was changed. This is something I will take care of sometime this month.

Phone

@ May 2, 2012 2:14 PM in What is this?

Yes it is and a little tale.
We once made a new bathroom in an extension. We got supeana for a court apearance. It seems that the lady when in the bath would get shocked when the phone rang. Don't forget that when the old phone rang, it used 70V!. They had the electrician check everything. Smart guy that he was, he saw the ground wire from that Bell junction/lightning box. He followed it. It was connected not to a cold water pipe but the bath overflow. The lady sued Bell. The Bell tech that did the job and his super were in court. The judge asked a few questions to the Bell guys. They said everything was up to code. He asked us a few questions. It was one of the early ABS piping jobs, so I explained that there was no conductivity by the plastic pipe and that normaly all grounds are on the cold water line. The judge asked the electrician for his views. The electrician shows him the sections of the electrical code. The judge rules for the lady that was geting shocked. Mind you this is Canada. The lady won $200 and we each got a bus ticket!

Efficiency experts?

@ May 2, 2012 1:59 PM in Treasurer-Condo Assoc

Not to get into a pissing match, but we redo more boiler rooms than anybody on the East coast: 200 plus, one year 400! These are not single family 1000 sq ft homes. Yes, you can improve steam efficiency. We have done that, but it cannot come close to a hydronic system. We have done two major commercial buildings who have steam in downtown Montreal. One had 10 million BTU the other 9 million BTU. Our modernisation project with new watertube boilers and digital controls reduced the energy consumption by 35%.
We converted the first Montreal skyscraper from steam to hydronic heating/cooling. The savings were over 50% plus now there is air conditioning! We converted Notre Dame Cathedral off of steam to hot water. I have a copy of the gas bill: 65% saving! We are presently working on a multimillion dollar modernisation of a one pipe hydronic system whose boiler room provides 29 million BTU.
We have repaired and maintained many steam heating systems including several apartment towers that have a one pipe vacuum system. We are of of the handful in the East that can handle all variations of steam heating besides industrial applications. Many other contractors refer to us for both steam heating/process problems and boiler installations. We are referred also by boiler and equipment manufacturers.
Do an energy analysis and you will easily find that steam should be used to work with and not heat with, specifically compared to hydronic heating! I am willing to part with one of my 2005 Brunello Riserva, if you can prove otherwise!

Conversions

@ May 1, 2012 1:05 PM in Treasurer-Condo Assoc

We have done several in commercial situations in downtown Montreal. The savings were unbelievable! The comfort for the user went up as radiator temperature varies with the outdoor temperature due to the out door temperature reset. Actual electricity costs went down, by a little. Another saving was the maintenance costs associated with steam heating: trap replacements etc..
When one sizes for an existing steam system, all the radiators must be measured and a safety factor added. For a hot water system, the building energy loss at an outdoor design temperature is used. Just off the cuff, your plumber has calculated a realistic load.
Boiler efficiencies do not show system efficiency. It is all in the boiler selection, control strategy, piping and proper pump selection, that make the difference. The greatest savings are in micro-managing the heat load by having the highest turn-down available, something that is not possible with most steam installations.

Liner

@ April 29, 2012 8:31 AM in Chimney: Is B-vent on top of masonry chimney possible?

Don't use an aluminium liner! They can be damaged during installation. Use only a S/S liner!

Muffler

@ April 27, 2012 10:44 AM in A. O. Smith Cyclone Xi Field Performance

The muffler was used on the first version of the Cyclone. The new Cyclone XI are not any noisier than any other condensing tank. You cannot run the vent up on an outside wall. One advantage of the Cyclone XI, is that you can increase the diameter of the vent as per the I&O manual, to increase the developed lenht.

Thanks

@ April 27, 2012 8:40 AM in A. O. Smith Cyclone Xi Field Performance

Thanks Mark! But, the manufacturers have no control over their distributors stocking of spares. They don't know what the inventory is. They only know what they have sold them.
They are both exhaust vents. The local utility had inspected the install before a number of changes were done. The building is a large old condo unit. They vented in the rear of the building which has a U courtyard. The units had "hard starts" as they were not properly started up and the burners were partially blocked by the sawdust. The combustion air is taken in the boiler room. Of course, the hard starts woke everyone who had a bedroom in the courtyard. So they added a 90 on each vent , thus increasing the noise. Then they built the insulated shed. The plumber is suing for his balance. They are counter suing to have the vents go to the roof. This is possible as there is an old incinerator chimney.
If I call the AHJ, they will shut it down even if it is not a dangerous situation. Meanwhile, I just keep my meter running and billing for interpreting an inexperienced in the field and who cannot read the instruction manual nor gas code, engineer's report and  then detailing all of his errors. $$$ Litigation is so much fun!