Heating Help

concentric

@ May 18, 2012 2:14 PM in Concentric vent termination

I don't think he is intending to use the chimney as a combustion air duct, he is using concentric venting which has sealed combustion air in the outer pipe in the same space as a B-vent from another appliance.

I don't know about the US but in Canada you would need to terminate it 6ft. from any mechanical air inlet to the building, and that includes a vent from any atmospheric appliance.

PP venting

@ May 11, 2012 3:36 PM in Is PVC an acceptable vent material for flue gases?

I find it curious he makes no mention at the end of the article of the various PP venting products that are available, I can't understand why everyone doesn't switch over to this in light of all the controversy surrounding PVC. I certainly have, it's only a little more costly than PVC, waaay cheaper than CPVC and outperforms either of them without the yummy solvents.

insulated pex

@ May 10, 2012 10:46 AM in Best Insulated Pex

The last time I ran insulated pex I used Heat Seal By Heat Link, it's similar to Uponor's & Rehau too I think in that it's multilayered insulation which makes it super flexible compared to some of the fairly rigid spray foam type ones i've used in the past. Also, it has a double outer wall so puncturing is less of a worry. Ran about 100ft of dual 1" and about 1 deg loss at the receiving end, not bad I think.
http://www.heatlink.ca/en/product/103

lots

@ May 2, 2012 7:58 PM in HBX controls, anyone using them?

I've been using them quite a bit for the past 3 years, just finished a small commercial water to water project replacing a hacked together ddc system with an ECO-1000 + EXP-0100 expansion module + 2 ZON-0500 zone modules + 7 THM-0200 thermostats controlling 2 5 ton ClimateMaster heat pumps & 2 existing Super Hot propane boilers. Works great! I like how you can set the heat pumps to be disabled at either a maximum buffer tank temperature or a minimum outdoor temperature or a combination of both.

tracking

@ April 30, 2012 10:57 AM in Radiant layout

I like tracking and have been using it exclusively for the past 10 years, I can lay a 250-300ft loop in a 1/2 hour average. Tying to rebar or mesh really sucks. ;P

piping layout

@ April 10, 2012 11:37 AM in Rads and TRVs

They forgot a manifold system, while it uses the most pipe is the easiest to install & balance. If you use a typical radiant manifold it will normally have balancing valves built-in, fancier ones have visual flow meters which make it a dream to balance your system.

For circulation I would use a variable speed smart pump, then there is no need for a bypass; if all the TRV"s are closed the circulator will sit & idle. Nothing needed to control it either, it just "sees" when valves are opening (ie. heat is required) & begins ramping up to the appropriate speed.

daphragm

@ April 4, 2012 11:26 AM in Baxi Luna 24 fi Some Hot Water

I find that 9/10 baxi services that I do are the diaphragms. I was told by the distributor 5 years tops lifespan for them. In this day and age of miracle polymers why can't they come up with something more durable in this application than butyl rubber? Silicone or something? I usually try to carry about a dozen or so in stock, looks like it's about time to reorder actually...

wrong tree

@ April 2, 2012 11:06 AM in Water Furnace pump failures

I have encountered this problem many times before, it isn't so much the water chemistry it's the complete lack of any kind of expansion/contraction allowances in the ground loop piping that is industry standard. Take an undersized slinky loop and run it hard all winter, not only do you freeze the ground but all that plastic pipe contracts and the pressure goes through the roof. Summers here, the loop runs hot, the pipe expands, pressure drops into the negative, pumps cavitate & die.

There are non pressurized flow centres on the market that alleviate this problem and I have used them, but all you need is an expansion tank on the loop piping & problem solved. I don't know why the geo industry doesn't get that you can't have a closed loop with a wide variance in temperatures & pressures & not expect to have problems because of it. I have been told by someone in the industry that that was what the rubber hose kit was for. Give me a break!

boiler venting in Canada

@ April 2, 2012 10:52 AM in New HTP install

Got an email from our gas inspector a few months ago clarifying proper application of S636 PVC & CPVC. The white PVC S636 shall only be installed on high eff furnaces & high eff tank style water heaters. For boilers you can only use the Grey CPVC because of the potential to reach higher temperatures than either furnaces or water heaters. I argued up and down with him about it that our boilers have temperature limits that would never allow that to happen but he just pointed at the clauses & said the code was the code. The grey S636 is extremely expensive so I don't use it anymore, I've switched to the gasketed PP stuff like Centro Therm or ECO King.

Power issues

@ March 26, 2012 4:18 PM in GSHP power issues

As ME said monitoring the incoming power would be very helpful in troubleshooting this issue. I've seen a lot of problems with GSHP's in rural areas due to inadequate/outdated power distribution systems that the utility swore up and down was top notch. If there is a dip in the incoming voltage on compressor start up the amperage draw will increase, possibly to the point of breaker tripping. But you should verify (or get an electrician to) that all connections are tight between the heat pumps and main service connection. On the heat pump end you could also try these: http://www.emersonclimate.com/en-US/products/electronics_compressors/Pages/securestart.aspx way better than a hard start, I have had good experiences with them.

Good luck!

thats it!

@ March 8, 2012 6:16 PM in Solar storage tanks

That's it, thanks for that Peter.

efficiency

@ March 8, 2012 11:11 AM in Solar Water heating and radiant or European radiator

You would do well to get a heatloss calculation done before doing anything, then you will know what can & can't be done in terms of heating the structure. You may not need 140deg for the plated system if you have enough insulation, good windows etc. The radiators have great efficiency they just need to be sized for the water temperature you intend to use them with; warmer=smaller, cooler=larger. (go larger ;)

On a side note you will need a lot of storage to do heating with the solar and some way to deal with the excess heat when it is not being used; outside heat dump or some such thing, there are a lot of novel ways to do it.

COP

@ March 7, 2012 3:51 PM in Geothermal Savings

That would be correct, that was on his old R-22 unit, the new one is R-410A and running on an outdoor reset curve, I have clocked it at almost 5 during milder conditions when it's putting out below 90deg F. Here we are only paying $.08 KWH so depending on where you are it may not be the best choice. A good energy advisor could do an analysis for you comparing different systems.

plastic liner

@ March 7, 2012 3:45 PM in Solar storage tanks

there was someone making these cool modular plastic lined tanks but for the life of me I can't find the website or remember their name.

meters

@ March 7, 2012 10:53 AM in Multimeters

Agree on the needing multiple meters; I have a nice Greenlee CMT-80 auto-ranging clamp-on recommended by an electrician friend but the problem with most auto-ranging meters is it has limited range on resistance, I can't read 10K sensors with it, so I use a cheap hardware store meter for that, I also picked up a UEI MCP-4 analog meter at the wholesalers for half price which is handy for seeing spikes & voltage drops as they happen, like with heat pumps & stuff.

geo savings

@ March 7, 2012 10:34 AM in Geothermal Savings

I replaced an electric boiler with a water to water heat pump supplying cast-iron rads in my dads place about 10 years ago and his bills went down approx 65% He just replaced his windows about a year ago and we put in a new heat pump. The old one was fine we just wanted to try out the new climatemaster THW, it does all his domestic hot water now too. I don't know what he's paying now exactly but he has told me it's pretty minimal. I'll see if I can find out and post back.

pex & solar

@ March 6, 2012 5:37 PM in New solar install with flaws!

We did this....once. It was our first solar install (which was incidentally the first viessmann collectors installed in canada) the tubes were mounted on a hill next to the house & we ran 1-1/4" pex through two 80ft. long 4" pvc conduits. The rep came by and was checking out the system and closed & opened some valves which caused the fluid to become super heated then when it hit the pex... well you know the rest. I wasn't there but the other guys said it sounded like a bomb went off. I kept the piece of pex around for many years until an over-zealous apprentice threw it out. We ended up pulling 3/4" soft copper through the conduits with a come-along. Lesson learned.

pool migration

@ March 6, 2012 5:19 PM in piping used for swimming pools

GSE: I actually have! it was a small (20,000 gal) therapeutic salt pool at a local spa, a cracked pvc fitting was the culprit, i've never had to wear a rain jacket inside a mechanical room before or since!

make your own

@ February 24, 2012 11:48 AM in are there any electric combiboilers sold in the U.S.?

I have built a custom combi electric using a flatplate heat exchanger & separate pump running on DHW priority triggered by a flow switch in the DHW potable flow.

Vitodens 200 (old style) 6-24C combi boiler

@ February 13, 2012 2:28 PM in Vitodens 200 (old style) 6-24C combi boiler

Had a customer back out with no deposit and I have been sitting on it for a year so I am selling it for cost. $4,800 CAD or USD (they are both at par right now) OBO. It's on ebay right now too.

Viessmann never really replaced it with a newer combi when they came out with the new 200 series so this is a rare item now.

Items included are:

-7134 405 Vitodens 200 6-24C combi boiler natural gas
-7134 233 installation fittings kit
-7134 207 power module
-7134 216 Vitodens 200 boiler control
-7134 409 vent pipe adaptor

approximate Purolator ground freight to Canada: $148-$202
to USA $274 (+possible duty & brokerage fees >:(

remote sensor

@ February 10, 2012 2:54 PM in Simple outdoor reset

Just wire a thermostat with remote sensor capability in series with your existing thermostat & put the sensor outside. Set the stat to read the remote sensor only & turn the temperature setting down to whatever you want the warm weather shutdown point to be. A Tekmar 508 thermostat would be a good choice but i'm sure there are others.

pool piping

@ February 8, 2012 8:04 PM in piping used for swimming pools

It is my understanding the only acceptable materials for salt water pool heat exchangers are titanium or cupro-nickel. You could use PEX with the plastic fittings for the piping, they are called HPP or poly-alloy sometimes I think.