Mark Eatherton
Joined on November 10, 2007
Last Post on February 6, 2012
Recent Posts
I agree with Bob...
@ February 6, 2012 9:27 PM in Mod Con common venting question...historical police!
I have seen HTP products that used a single combined vent (like 12" PVC) for numerous of their boilers,but it MUST be designed by the factory and is going to require check valves on each boilers exhaust to avoid recycling flue products back through the off boilers.Check with the manufacturer(s) of your choice.
ME
Related thread....
@ February 6, 2012 4:55 PM in Carpet placement with radiant baseboards?
Fresh too...http://www.heatinghelp.com/forum-thread/139847/Low-Delta-T-between-boiler-Supply-and-Return
Baseboards should almost never be placed on the rough floor. SOMETHING is eventually going to be placed beneath it.
If someone is worried about being able to see unfinished wall between the bottom of the board and the floor, have them paint that area dark brown so it doesn't stick out so badly. Plus, in most cases, a person would have to be almost laying down to see the gap.
ME
1/2" should be fine...
@ February 6, 2012 2:39 PM in Expansion Tank Pipe Size
The velocity of the expanding fluid will be nil.The diaphragm is made for he temperatures and pressure it will be seeing, so no benefit to running a larger pipe to dissipate heat before it sees the bladder.
ME
If only it were that easy Kev...
@ February 6, 2012 12:50 PM in I am stumped....
If all I were looking for were pipe chases, your idea would hold water. However, I was physically looking for cross connected valves. It ends up, that the brass valve bodies had enough corrosion on them (1966) that the emmisivity was perfect for the IR camera.Attached find IR photographs of the good, the bad, and ugly. Valves that is...
Per the instructions, we had to pull the valves face plate off to be able to see the actual valve body, but that was the EASY part. Getting good water isolation proved to be much more difficult.
Enjoy!
ME
I was stumped....
@ February 6, 2012 10:13 AM in Best Recirc Demand Control for Multifamily
http://www.heatinghelp.com/forum-thread/139692/I-am-stumpedME
If you are going to go to that kind of trouble....
@ February 6, 2012 8:57 AM in pres
Maybe you should consider using WarmBoard R panel. It was designed with retrofit in mind, and will give a small thermal break between the existing slab and the new heat emitting panel.It will also perform well with much lower water temperatures than will gypcrete or concrete.
Getting some kind of thermal break between the old slab and the new emitter is critical to overall efficiency, especially if the existing slab is without insulation.
Alternately, consider radiant ceilings using the same R panel. When it is on, the floor is NOT cold.
ME
Discretion is a butter best spread thin....
@ February 6, 2012 8:51 AM in CO Incident:
Sometimes, if you can get in contact with a chief or assistant chief, you can explain the POTENTIAL situation to them, and they will not show up red lights and sirens. In fact they don't even need to bring a pumper to investigate, just a CO detector.Good catch on your and Tim's part. Funny that they are right next to each other. Sounds like a need for continuing education. Of the AHJ, The Owners, and the fire departments head personnel.
ME
Oy....
@ February 6, 2012 8:36 AM in Boiler is short cycling
It looks like it was installed by a less than skilled person.If it were me, I'd repipe it t make it more reliable and dependable. Nothing worse than worrying about your heating system when you're not there.
Non barrier PEX is a huge issue. It can be addressed by maintain a high pH, but requires checking on a regular basis, and when things go to hell in a a hand basket, it happens quick, and in your case a WHOLE bunch of components will be affected (basically anything ferrous is going to go away). Alternately, you could set a brazed plate heat exchanger to isolate the boiler from the rest of the distribution system,... Scratch that idea. You've still got ferrous components in the field... Sorry for the false hope. Maintaining pH is still a viable option but you will eventually forget to do it and then everything crashes.
With this much ferrous stuff in the system, I'd really strongly recommend you replace the non barrier pipe with barrier pipe. That is the BEST long term solution. And as Bob Eck pointed out, maybe the use of a central manifold with 1/2" or even 5/8" BARRIER PEX to the rad's would be a better option for a DIY type of person. It requires less piping skills, and can be done in less time than doing the parallel reverse return system, and it too would provide the same water temperatures to the rad's when they call.
While you are at it, you need air separation/elimination, and that expansion tank shouldn't be hanging in mid air as it is without substantial pipe support. If it snaps off, and you're not home, you could come home to a swimming pool in your basement, At that point, the code REQUIRES the appliances to be replaced.
Sorry we didn't have better news for you, but if you ignore this system, it WILL be very problematic for you...
PEX does get soft, and absorbs more O2 when its hot, and it also expands in length a great deal.
Can you take a picture of the problematic radiator? Could just be air bound. You NEVER want to bleed a standing radiator system with the pump ON. Maintain adequate water pressure to push air out, but do not try and bleed with the pumps running. You will miss a WHOLE bunch of air.
FWIW, you could probably go thru this winter without dong much damage to the system so you're not replacing a heating system in the middle of the Winter. Just turn the water temperatures as low as possible (~ 150 F?) to avoid oxygen diffusion.
I'm in Denver, a long ways away from Philly
Thanks for the offer anyway.
Get back to us on the troublesome radiator.
The fact that your system corrected itself indicates to me an air problem, but that is a blind recommendation. (air got pushed to and is trapped in the upright radiators)
ME
Nah, you guys got it all wrong...
@ February 5, 2012 6:48 PM in About three hours left.
Broncos by 12 ;-)Huh? We're not playing?
OK, We'll be back next year ;-)
ME
Bummer dude...
@ February 5, 2012 5:17 PM in Just saying Hell0 - Mad Dog
I know you put your heart and soul into the company. Oh well, I am SURE you will do fantastic with whoever you join.Keep in touch my friend,
ME
I'd call the F.D.
@ February 5, 2012 1:26 PM in CO Incident:
Takes the monkey off of your back and places it on theirs.I can't speak for Dan, but i suspect the CO Awareness section fell off due to a lack of interest. It's like most contractors think if they don't acknowledge that there is a problem, they will be find innocent WHEN it happens to them.
Nothing could be further from the truth...
Note that I said WHEN it happens, and not if...
Sad but true.
If you don't test, you don't know, and not knowing is NOT considered an excuse of liability when it does happen. Document, document, document, and notify people in writing (return receipt requested) when you find a situation that warrants immediate action.
ME
My experience with ion (sodium) exchange units...
@ February 4, 2012 9:45 PM in Non-Softening Scale Control Devices
I had to replace ALL of the DHW lines, and circ return lines in a large hotel in Cheektowaga New York due to an overzealous salt salesman who had their softeners set for ZERO grains of hardness. Per the CDA, softened water is known to carry more oxygen, and is extremely aggressive towards copper tubing. In fact, if a house uses soft water from day one, it will not allow a protective patina to be laid down, thereby allowing the copper tubing to be attacked by the oxygen in the water and will fail much earlier than expected. So much for salt softeners being the ideal and preferred method of water conditioning...As an apprentice, coming up under my father in the plumbing trade, he noted that all of his male customers who had been sold a water softener (7 GPH background hardness) ended up suffering from one heart malady or another. Shortly thereafter, the AMA came out and said that anyone with problems associated with heart disease should avoid the use of sodium softened water. Too late by then, most of his customers with softeners had died, or suffered debilitating strokes from the soft water being absorbed through their skin. Talk about snake oil salesmen...
Did you ever wonder why it is that they don't recommend that you drink soft water , or why it is that they ALWAYS bypass the exterior lawn faucets and not allow the growing things to be watered with soft water??? If you've ever seen a lawn or garden that has been watered with soft water, you'd know why.
The very first MHD conditioner I ever installed was given to me and my customer, who had a 199K btuH tank style water heater that was SO LOUD from liming that it kept the homeowner up when it would fire at night to recover its standby losses. I warned her that it was a new device to me, and that I could not guarantee that it would even work. She agreed to give it a shot anyway. I also warned her that if any faults or cracks were in the vessel of the tank, that there was a real good possibility that the tank could fail.
When I called her back after a month, she said the heater was virtually silent. 6 weeks later, she called to tell me that the heater had failed, and she needed a new one. That was a BonAqua strap on unit. By your judgement, that makes me a quack. Thanks for the compliment.
Back to Buffalo. There was a commercial dishwasher on this property (Hobart) that had an element that sat in a well, and kept the water in the wash tank warm. It looked like something out of Yellowstone Nat'l Park. Crystals with heat emminating from the crystals. Somewhere, way deep inside was an electric element.
In order to replace the rinse heads on the wash arms, they had to remove the wash arms and send them to a sand blasting shop to clear the calcium so they could get a wrench on the flats of the jets.
I "gave" them a Superior MHD unit, and piped it into the circ return of their kitchen hot water heating system. Bear in mind that Cheektowagas water is EXTREMELY hard. After about 6 months time, I was back at the property doing additional work, and remembered to ask the Chief Engineer if he'd had a chance to look at the problematic dish washer to see if there was any change. He said "Lets go look!" We swang by the kitchen, and he opened the panels to the dishwasher and exclaimed "HOLY CRAP!"
My heart jumped into my throat. I thought for sure that the device had failed. He then proceeded to say that in the 15 years he'd worked at this hotel, that this was the first time he'd actually seen the maintenance heating element, and that the spray rinse arm looked brand new, as did the whole insides of the machine.... Did I mention that I had to rip the sodium exchange softener out 6 months earlier?
And then there was the son of a prominent physician, whose mother told me that their son was wanting to do a Science Fair experiment with water, but didn't know exactly what he could do. I sat down with him, and introduced him to a Superior MHD water conditioner that I carried around as a demo unit for customers in need (I don't sell them unless needed). He set up a scientific experiment using Alfalfa Seed Sprouts using three different types of water.
One with straight city water, one with softened water (his parents had a softener in their house) and one with raw city water that had been run through the Superior unit. He photographed these sets of sprouts over a period of time, and documented the growth of the sprouts. The soft water plants started to sprout, then died. The raw water sprouts grew as well as could be expected. The MHD conditioned sprouts grew twice as fast as the raw water sprouts, and ended up growing TWICE as large as the raw water samples. He won first place at his school, and took second place in the State competition.
These to me, mean much more than a person who takes a short term view, and pooh poohs a given technology without giving it time to work to see if there are any long term results/benefits.
The Superior Water Conditioning Company (a division of ChemTune, Inc) has been building water conditioners since 1964. They have been banned from selling them in the same state in which they are made (Indiana) by the Water Quality Association, which had a powerful ($) lobbiest to get them outlawed in the state of Indiana. And they are still in business today...
The Field Controls Corp has a unit that uses 24 VAC to generate the signal that conditions water. I have one in my mountain home ($200.00) It is called a Clear Wave. I've had it in operation for 6 months now. I installed it due to rather hard water (12 GPG) and the spotting occurring on our dishes. I figured if it was spotting on the dishes, it was probably plugging the brazed plate heat exchanger that does my DHW. After about a month of usage, the white spots on the dishes disappeared.
Now, these are just a selected few of my positive experiences with MHD water conditioning devices, and I've not even talked about the cooling tower applications I have performed over the years.
OK, you can say that these are all anecdotal, but I have seen them with my own eyes (and the customers eyes) and I know for a fact, that they work. Not in every case (won't affect silica based calcification), but in the cases where I applied them, they work great. As a matter of a fact, I can't recall one that DIDN'T work.
You are entitled to your opinion. Just please keep the caustic comments to a minimum. Ya just never know who you are going to offend... Think before you write. We are all here to learn and teach.
PS, The Department of the Navy has had positive experience with these devices as well. Are their claims also bogus?
ME
Hammers and wedges...
@ February 4, 2012 8:13 PM in Will Boiler Come Apart?
Yes, it will come apart. You have to "coax" it using an 8 pound maul, and wood splitting wedges.They will calve off like loaves of bread, so be prepared to jump quick when it start shedding pieces.
To make it even easier, you could break the sections into even smaller pieces by continually hammering with the sledge on a given line until it starts sounding hollow, then give it a good hard smack and it will break in half.
Be prepared for a muddy mess. There are years of rust in those sections..
ME
I've never seen that Frank...
@ February 4, 2012 11:42 AM in Supply & Return Both Very Hot, Minimal Heat from Baseboard
Not to say that it can't happen, but based on Reynolds numbers, it doesn't sound possible.But as I've said, I've not seen EVERYTHING, but have seen a LOT of things, and thats not one I've experienced.
ME
No apologies necessary Tony...
@ February 4, 2012 11:26 AM in Non-Softening Scale Control Devices
We are ALL here to learn. And this is not the first, nor the last time I will be called upon the carpet for promoting alternative water conditioning.As I've stated before, these are NOT a fix all for all water quality issues. Ion exchange softeners have their place in life to be sure.
Thanks for chiming in.
ME
Too much attention being paid to delta Ts?
@ February 4, 2012 10:55 AM in Low Delta T between boiler Supply and Return
Are we designing these systems to satisfy the equipment, or the people inside the buildings?Are we willing to have to put on sweaters just to satisfy our need of providing for a low temperature return?
Remember, most existing hot water baseboard systems were designed with AVERAGE water temperatures of 180 to 200 degrees F. This will only be necessary for roughly 2 % of the time north of the Mason Dixon line...
The ONLY way to (properly) increase the D.T. is to increase the load, or increase the heat emitters, neither of which makes sense after the fact. Performing significant conservation efforts (windows, caulking, insulation) will reduce the loads to the point that the existing convectors CAN be more effective with lower average water temperatures, but conservation efforts should come FIRST, not later..
Fact: In my 36 years of tromping through mechanical rooms, at design conditions, in systems that I know for a FACT were properly designed, installed and operated, I have seen a true 20 degree F delta T on (wait for it.....) ONE system. To be fair, that was a brand new system, that was being cold started with a completely cold house inside, at design conditions. When I went back to the job to commission it a few days later, the D.T. had dropped to a 7 to 10 degree differential, and the house was completely comfortable, wall to wall.
If the flow is correct, and the heating elements correct, delta T is WYSIWYG.
If there is TOO much base board on a given zone, creating a HUGE D.T., then I can just about guarantee you that any rooms near the end of that circuit WILL suffer from low temperatures. Been there, seen that, had to split loops to make it all better.
The trade off of not keeping a modcon boiler in the condensing mode all the time is insignificant. If you really are concerned about keeping it purely in the condensing mode, get ready to buck up Bunky, cause the only way you are going to be able to achieve this AND deliver good comfort is to increase the surface areas of the emitting surfaces (read adding high mass or high efficiency heat emitters to every surface available, i.e. WarmBoard EVERYWHERE.)
Quit worrying about stepping over dollars of comfort for pennies of efficiency. If properly applied (outdoor reset) you will realize a minimum reduction of 30% just in the change in appliance efficiency.
'Nuff said??
ME
Clearance Clarence...
@ February 4, 2012 10:33 AM in Supply & Return Both Very Hot, Minimal Heat from Baseboard
I typically defer to the manufacturers literature, but like to see a minimum of 1" inlet on the bottom. It is also quite common for carpet layers to get lazy and put the carpet in in such manner that it completely blocks air flow to the fin tube elements...Pull the cover, and look carefully.
And you are welcome.
ME
Slowing the flow won't change much....
@ February 4, 2012 10:06 AM in Supply & Return Both Very Hot, Minimal Heat from Baseboard
There are things at work that the minds eye has trouble seeing, like Reynolds numbers, average temperatures etc.THe fact that you have hot water flowing across the baseboard indicates to me that you have flow. You can confirm this by carefully quickly closing a ball valve serving that zone. If you hear a hydraulic HISSss as you close the valve, you've got flow. Need to look someplace else for the cure. If no hiss, no flow.
Look carefully at the finned tube elements. Some are closed on two sides. If the finned tube element was improperly installed (turned 90 degrees), then even with hot water flowing across the convector, it the element can't breath, then few btu's drop off the pipe and into the air.
Maintaining a high average temperature across a given convector is a good thing as it pertains to delivering heat. I do not believe that you can run the water across these elements too fast (exclusion being errosive velocities).
There is this misnomer that by slowing the flow, and getting a higher delta T, that the emitters are actually delivering MORE energy. Wrong. Delta T is dictated by the load and the emitters. The only way you can increase the delivery of btu's is to either increase the load (leave windows and doors open) or increase the heat emitters surface areas to deliver more heat.
Which moves more energy, a pipe moving 1 GPM at a 100 degree F rise, or a pipe moving 100 GPM at a 1 degree F rise???
I'll let you do the math on that one :-)
Good luck.
ME
In fairness to the Sparky...
@ February 4, 2012 9:26 AM in Nest Learning Thermostat
If he was asked only to set a transformer on the boiler so that the NEST could get 24 volts, then he would have been OK. Trouble starts IF he tries to interface the old and new controls.ME
In fairness....
@ February 4, 2012 9:22 AM in Non-Softening Scale Control Devices
NUGS had posted this link to a technical web site on the other post.www.chem1.com
Am still reading it..
ME
Crazy year...
@ February 4, 2012 9:19 AM in Colorado
We got around 2 feet here in Denver, but 100 miles West,at Hydronicahh, they got 1", for a grand total on the ground up there of 6". Normally, this time of the year there is around 2 feet on the ground up there. We are about 3 times ahead of normal snowfall accumulations for Denver for this time of the year.Usually, during the Stock Show, Denver is typically submerged in a deep freeze, but this year it was in the 60's and 70's.
Crazy year weather wise.
Kevin, funny that you should mention the vent thing. I just dropped a note to my favorite TV station asking them to warn people to carefully inspect their vent terminations to avoid snow blockage, and possible CO poisoning.
We'll see if they run it during the news cast.
Gotta keep an eye out for your neighbors (and YOURS) vent terminations.
Thanks for asking. We're OK.
ME
