Heating Help

Yes, I did consider that...

@ October 18, 2011 12:13 AM in Tankless with recirc and possibly storage

I do understand that the Grundfos has the timer. I just wanted to relate about the worst case , or one of the worst recircs I've seen. It was one of those that I still wonder why it took me so long to figure it out and then I spent a bunch of time there to prove I was right. It is a cautionary tale:)

Jason, from a cost/benefit to you and the consumer, I think that pumping the mains is about your only option. Do run a 3/4" return line.

I would still look at the Metlund with the motion sensors. More money perhaps, but a better more efficient system.

Ah, Jason...

@ October 15, 2011 11:40 AM in Tankless with recirc and possibly storage

Here is something else to consider. Years ago I had a guy install two Rinnai's with a 10 gal elec buffer tank. This place was enormous and the plumber installed the water heaters in the most remote corner of the building from the load. He then pumped the tank. This was early in the game for me with the tankless and was a real head scratcher. I finally had one of those 3am EUREKA moments.

What was going on is that the pipe lengths were so great that the electric elements in the tank could not keep up with the heat loss of the piping, so the tank just never $hut down. The owner would get in the shower in the morning and run the piping and the tank capacity before getting hot water.

I offer this as a caution with the tank. Personally, I don't care for those systems.

Could be mounted to high

@ October 11, 2011 2:45 PM in lg mini

I think Fujitsu limits their high wall height to 8or 9' for this very reason. With these inverter minis the actual sensing element is on the evaporator. Check that for LG, but I believe this to be the case. Does LG offer a wired remote for these? That may be your only option. Line of sight for the remote is necessary, but the remote is not a stat. It is a communicator

Deeply saddened by this news

@ October 10, 2011 8:55 PM in Al Letellier

Over the last 25 yrs I would see Al in my travels thru Maine and at the shows. We did a lot of business together and always had great conversations. It was always a pleasant meeting. We had some great code conversations and he was a really good source of information and viewpoint for me in my time on the 31 committee. But, thru all this work we became friends. This is incredibly sad news. My condolences to the family

At 9gpm, I'd suggest

@ October 10, 2011 8:41 PM in Tankless with recirc and possibly storage

another tankless paired with the first. If you consider the load, the customer wants a 15 min shower. What if he decides to go longer? You can make a system big enough to handle it with a boiler and indirect but the fact is you are designing a system that 24 hrs a day will work to provide 15 min worth of high flow. Two tankless twinned together are ideal for this application as the system will modulate on the actual flow whether from a single lav or the mac-daddy shower. As well, once the max flow is achieved the system will continue to make that flow all day or until the septic system blows up. You have the "potential" for the shower but you consume no standby energy.

How big a tank?

@ October 4, 2011 11:06 PM in Tankless with recirc and possibly storage

AO and BW have "storage tanks". A discussion to have with your customer is how long does he expect to shower. At 12gpm this is an important question, both for your choice of storage tank and his happiness factor. Again, by the time you buy and pipe the tank, you are in the range of another tankless. Of course you have to have the gas capacity to carry it. Generally, for an 80 gallon tank I'd want two tankless anyway.

Many have a "Dry" mode

@ October 3, 2011 12:01 AM in Does a minisplit have a de-humidify-only setting?

But it is to the best of my knowledge not for dehu only. It will respond to the t-stat function. Given that most of the ms are inverter, or variable speed, you want to make sure you don't over size the unit. No system can dehumidify if it is off. What is frequently most important in your case is how low operation can continue.

For example, i received a call from a customer who had installed a 24kbtu unit to cool and provide dehumidification in a super insulated home. The unit was not operating well. The 24k unit had a minimum input of 10.5kbtu. 10.5 was to high a minimum for this space. It would cycle off on the t'stat and, not being able to continue to run, could not provide the necessary dehumidication. I sugested that for the dehumidification to improve a unit which could run at a lower rate would be preferred. The 12kbtu unit would go as low as 3,600 btu, providing longer run times and therefore better dehu.

Ok, here goes!

@ September 26, 2011 12:07 PM in Tankless with recirc and possibly storage

I just checked the specs on the TK-3 and at a 70F rise you are looking at 4.6 gpm +/-. you say that at peak flow you need 12gpm. Do you mean peak is with everything operating? What is everything? What fixtures and flow rates do you have? Coming in late on a job can be a killer, so where ever you go from now you must be right. Otherwise the first guy who screwed up will be forgotten and you hold the bag. Ask Obama about that! Oops, don't go there;)

For recirc I am a big fan of the Metlund design system. I prefer a dedicated return line as I had a contractor put in one of the cross connects and because of the piping lay-out everytime the pump came on the toilet became a bidet. THAT was a head scratcher, but at least they were getting their bottom washed with warm water;) Given that the place is enclosed I would do the compromise fix on recirc and pump the mains in the basement. Run a 3/4" return line. That should take care of the majority of the water. Perfect, no, but it will, depending upon piping lay-out improve the over-all performance at a moderate cost.

With out the flow info in the first paragraph, it is difficult to help design, but let's look at a few things for now. Rather than adding storage right out of the chute, I would analyze the whole structure and see if you could add a second tankless handling the far side of the house. Attic installs can work really well here. Don't overlook it.

IF you go with storage, get a storage tank. Ideally you want at least 4 tank penetrations. Cold in, hot out, tankless supply and tankless return to storage. I've done a lot of these and they work really well, but I would go first with another tankless. Get the answers on the flow questions and we can go further if you'd like.

MAKE SURE YOU LOOK AT AND UNDERSTAND THE TAKAGI FLOW SPECS BEFORE YOU RECOMMEND TO YOUR CUSTOMER. EVERYTHING HAS TO FLOW (SO TO SPEAK) FROM WHAT IS THERE AND YOU ARE NOT GOING TO GET 7GPM OUT OF THAT UNIT.

Max vent length is 41' equiv.

@ September 23, 2011 10:40 AM in Max Vent Length

90=6', 45=3' If the deck is high and open on the sides, the vent can be terminated 3' below the deck. You must maintain your clearance above the ground however. Whenever you look at venting any appliance in a "commonly used" area you have to consider whether or not it is going to be an inconvenience. Your call there. I have had success running the vent pipe to the front edge of the deck, BUT, the vent pipe must be sleeved with 6" sch 40 pvc, graded properly and the support has to be bomb proof. Any kid who can get under the porch/deck makes a fort. Any conveniently located pipe is a swing. If you do this, you have to make sure the pipe will not move.

In looking at relocating the water heater, the big issue is to try to get it closer to the primary load

It's.....

@ September 23, 2011 10:27 AM in What Plumbing fixture is this

A Ball Washer. All the best courses used them

Most line sets

@ September 21, 2011 10:59 AM in Support for lineset

That I have handled become work hardened in the installation. I think, if I'm reading your post correctly (always an issue for me) that what is most important is how the line set is mounted/supported on the horiz runs. Unless you had a unistrut type friction hanger on the riser you are only holding it in place with your aluminum strips. I believe that Air-tec and Diversitech are the two companies offering line set covers. Of the two I prefer the Airtec. I also really like their mounting brackets for ms installations. There really isn't much you can do for the "foam" insulation to keep it from compressing. You could use a larger clevis type hanger with a saddle, but any weight is going to flatten it out.

Your energy savings

@ September 21, 2011 10:47 AM in pellet stove vs nat gas steam heat

If there are to be any will come from heating a smaller area with the "stove". You will likely turn the boilers stat down and heat your primary area with the pellet stove. When you need or want the whole place warm you will touch off the boiler.

Personally, if I'm burning wood I want something that will work without elec. If I have to kick my 200 yr old windsor apart to heat the house I don't want to then have to whittle it into pellets. Pellet "boilers" make sense to me as you are not having to handle the fuel all the time. My other issue with pellet stoves is they are pretty noisey. Many, many like them, but having been in that business, I'm not a fan. Personally, I'm looking at either a VC Encore or a Jotul F 400.

The only new tank

@ September 5, 2011 11:14 AM in Expansion Tanks - Are they all the same?

I am aware of is from Metlund. it is a "flow thru" design. The concept is self cleaning, or at least flushing. There is an inlet ttap and an outlet tap. When you think about how many expansion tanks "heal up" at the 1/2" mpt tap and if you've ever cut one apart, you can have some manky "stuff" in there, I think Larry may be on to something.

restaurants and tankless

@ September 4, 2011 6:22 PM in Navien as a commercial water heater

I never do a restaurant without the make and model of the DW and a call to Rinnai Engineering. They have all the specs on CDW's and have developed some interesting systems. They generally will not allow a comm DW without a booster. I prefer that too. I will fed 140F water to the booster and then the rest of the kitchen can run confident that no 180F water is going to go squirting wround the place. Not a small concern! The other reason not to run the really high temps is that is you look at the ASHRAE guide (as well, it is in Rinnai's Hot Water Design Manual) they show the amount of precipitant that come out of water at various temps from 100-180F. The tankless will do the 180, but you had better have pristine water quality and/or a pretty aggressive maintenance program

perhaps...

@ September 2, 2011 12:15 AM in Navien as a commercial water heater

you should look at this with a more open mind. Your mind is made up, prior to the sale. What your customer needs is a solid technical/cost/feature analysis. Tankless/storage systems work really well, but yes you have to understand both the pumping and piping requirements. They are not limitations. If you understand them, they are features. You can tell your customer that he will probably never get the the 199k input out of the tankless. GPM X Delta T X 500 = BTU Unless he pumps the bejeepers out of it the tankless will not deliver the max input except at possibly cold start-up.

I have done a lot of tankless/storage systems. I never want to size the circ for max flow. I'll generally hit the 80% of capacity range and let the equipment do its thing. I don't like to drive my car at redline all the time and I won't do it with equipment. As well, whenever someone wants to use a single tankless with storage, especially on commercial I always try to get at least a second unit. I'll trade storage for btu capacity. In a commercial application having redundancy allows the business to stay open if one unit fails. If you have only one unit and it fails you are managing the catastrophe. IN comparison to commerical water heaters I can generally make the numers work for tankless. This has been a tremendous plus for me in commercial jobs. Have you looked at how many units it would take to eliminate the need for storage? There are definitely times I want storage with tankless depending upon the flow characteristics and physical lay-out of the job, but there are also systems where storage is jsut shifting the cost form burner capacity to gallons.

As always, I want to acknowledge my bias. I represented Rinnai for 20 years and that is the tankless I would recommend.

it is called Bikrum Yoga

@ August 31, 2011 5:35 PM in Hot yoga studio heat source

and they will run the room between 100-105F

I am still a C Corp in MA

@ August 27, 2011 2:27 PM in Corporate Filings and do I really need a lawyer for this?

I cannot answer as to whether or not you can do it. I'd suggest a discussion with your attorney asking how you can work with him but reduce expense. Probably not much you can do with his time and clerical to beat $500, but you never know until you ask. My partner and I continue to let the atty take care of it for us, but we do not have multiple companies. I think my conversation would be how do I best combine the two LLC's and the C to arrive at a more manageable business model. I do know that it is not the easiest thing to convert a C to another format. Good luck. Keep us posted on your solutions!

Very effective demonstration...

@ August 6, 2011 12:20 AM in Drink this if you want

Now, fellas, I've been a peddler most of my life, as have you;) i have seen some incredible pitches done by top people and it is a pleasure to watch them. I will reference our host as a good example. Here, all I can think of is the Wizard of Oz. "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain."

"And folks, to demonstrate how safe this process is, I've brought Seth, here, one of my most valued employees to demonstrate the safety of our claim".

It's sad really. What pin heads.

Oh, and just to keep this in perspective, keep in mind that when they came out with the info on how bad asbestos is for you, Your correspondent, having worked with much of it, was very concerned. I thought about it and in one of my few and better mathematical choices decided that as in mathmatics, where two negatives equal a positive that I should do something to offset the deleterious effectof the asbestos. So as a pipefitter/welder, I went into the powerhouse endof things, worked on a few shutdowns, got a close cuddle with a couple reactors and now have a half life of my own. We'll see if the zoomies offset the asbestos;) i wonder how thia guy will feel about this in the future?

The floor

@ July 26, 2011 10:16 AM in Conditioned Crawlspace?

Dirt or concrete?

Thanks for the kind words

@ July 23, 2011 8:58 AM in Changes for me...

I'll still be hangin' here. Old habits are hard to give up;) I know that to be true as I've had most of them! i arrived in CA last night. Onward

Check out

@ July 22, 2011 3:24 PM in tankless back up to solar

Bonomi valves. You can lay them out in any flow configuration and they have the lowest turning torque of about any valve. That means ypu can use a small Bonomi actuator. I believe they are at bonomi.us. You then have to co-ordinate the tank temp to bypas the tankless with the flow capability of the tankless.

Changes for me...

@ July 19, 2011 9:16 PM in Changes for me...

Tomorrow is my last day as a manuf rep in the New England territory. 15 mos ago we merged our company with another to create a larger and all together better organization (www.srgirep.com). This merge represents a buy-out for me and as I get ready to leave, I cannot help but think, " be careful what you wish for, as it may come true".

Fri I am moving to CA to spread my particular brand of joy there;) Both of my girls live in CA, they are not coming back, I miss them and by golly, they can run but they cannot hide, so, the boss and I are going to chase them.

I have licenses, long inactive, to build anything six stories and under in CA as well as my mechanical licenses. I will only work on my own home and those of people I want to get back at. I do have some opportunities in CA and intend to continue working. To young(?) /dumb to quit!

To all of you with whom I worked thru the years, who thought that I was helping you, I must say that quite the opposite was true. It was you helping me, and I thank you for it! Happy Trails, boys, the adventure continues!