Heating Help

Poly nightmare

@ December 8, 2009 3:49 PM in Heating Hell photos of the past

The pic with all the zone valves and polyethylene was from a no heat and possible boiler replacement call I was sent to in Boulder, CO. There was another identical cast iron they had piped into the system that was disabled and shoved into a corner along with a pile of iron pumps and expansion tanks. By the way, this wasn't a radiant infloor app., it was a baseboard job.

I informed the customer of the oxygen permeation of the tubing and the effect on ferrous components and they said, "Why didn't the other plumbers that bid the job didn't say anything about that?"  I said the ones you picked must not be experienced in hydronics as I am. BTW, they brought this house to fix and flip. They hadn't lived there in the winter and didn't know how it performed. Without doing a heat loss I could tell the baseboard was marginal. Using a mod con and resetting the output temps using lower temps to preserve the polyethylene was probably out of the question. A total repipe was the only way I wanted to approach it. They asked for a ballpark figure for just replacing the boiler. I called the next day after some figuring and gave a price along with disclaimers. They said I was 3 times higher than the  highest bid they had so far and thanked me for my time. 

That was 3 years ago and I've always wondered what happened with that job. I imagine we may see some photos of it on the wall in the future. Addition pics attached.

My advice

@ December 8, 2009 2:28 PM in Laars Endurance EBP flow switch

It sounds like you keep an eye on your system so I would go ahead and use the 2400-542 for now. It's definitely an improvement from the plastic one and it should last longer but just keep an eye on it. It is a hassle to open the cover to check it out but better than replacing the inducer when the flow switch fail and spews water everywhere.

When you get back into the chips, then go ahead and install the new one and do the plumbing needed to adapt.