Heating Help

Hello ....

@ January 16, 2012 9:47 PM in Old Crane boiler

Dan,
i had one of these boilers and burners in my yard for years, i moved it to the far corner of my lot so it is buried under the snow. to day it warmed up into the 30/35 below zero realm.
that boilers burner has electrodes that are long pieces of wire very similar to clothes hanger wire. i may have taken the buurner off of it if so i can get the info for you buh i will have to "Suit Up" to go look for it : )

if i do not reply within half an Hr you may have to call my buddy Rocky to come over to the house and defrost me...LOL

Weezbo
#~//: )
OOPS! your wanting to get the boiler in fo .. Hmmmm... i bought it off an old boiler maker years ago , actually i made him think that it was a "Find" and gave him 150 $ to drag it up out of his basement with a weight lifter friend...it doesn't have the original skin as he made some tin suit for it...
basically its well dressed for a boat anchor . and now that the old guy has moved on to a more certain reward i do not mind saying its the only anchor like that on my lot. :)
its pretty far back there Dan and well, getting at it wont be easy...

Harvey

@ January 15, 2012 7:30 PM in Wooden Ductwork!

why not invite the manufacturer here?
then , perhaps you will get additional information ....
you can certainly see by the responses that in some instances many of us seek further clarification.
technically when we have burned this much daylight at our work and we see something wrong we help one another see things from another perspective.
one day,...
i was driving down a road and saw a wood stove stack on FIRE and could clearly see the roof was rolled roofing and some guy standing outside and some little children running all about outside ,,he was attempting to get them back into the house...so i pulled over and told him the stack was on fire he told me to mind my own business..that he was the land lord and the lady inside and the children were his tenants..
so i told him that i am a mechanical contractor and that in this instance i am an agent of the government and to get them out and away from the building and he could either sort it out with the Fire Chief at the police department later or do as i say.
because you are basically the AHJ its then important to help them out in whatever way that you can. same goes for someone servicing a nat gas or propane appliance .. i think we can be held criminally responsible were we not to do so.

Harvey , its 48 below today

@ January 15, 2012 5:33 PM in Wooden Ductwork!

i am writing this from eight miles outside the town of North Pole ,Alaska and the fire trucks sirens and horns just went by on the highway,, our rising fuel oil prices have folks reacting ..... buying many "Solutions" for the immediate problem.. not having vast financial resources ,... they think to do the work and save some money. i am sad for that in a number of ways .
in the past Alaska had the dubious distinction of having more deaths by fire of any state in the union. and the other nearby town the distinction of having the most fire hazards in the state. we managed to turn all that around over the years.
not having read the manufacturers suggested installation guide i am going to take a SWAG that 24" to a Heat shields closer to what ought to be happening...
Weezbo
*~//: )
when you run heated air over wood it strips the moisture from it.. this helps it burn brighter faster hotter yah? so generally folks put the dry wood IN the wood stoves . if for any reason there ever was a breach in the combustion chamber , into a wooden plenum there is insufficent time to stop the spread of fire . the loss of even one human life cannot be repaid . help in whatever way you can .

dbl clk

@ January 14, 2012 7:28 AM in I am stumped....

i also happen to agree with icesailor in what he is saying about the temps being different enough to throw the entire existing system outta whack . sometimes the existing system is "Used to" seeing some specific water temp and with our constant vigil on the ROI we may tend to forget that the older parts and pieces may be a none to perfect marriage .. .
possibly the old valves need to see hotter water supply than may be currently allowed with the new system.

thats a Wag buh i think that is as good as any . see if that thought that icesailors got there helps get the system back in balance...

old rising stems...

@ January 14, 2012 7:28 AM in I am stumped....

something that helps open and close the older valves is backing off the pressure behind the valves .. u could go with turning of the main on a week end , draining the floors above the gate on the risers
re filling the systems that would help you get around the locking of the gate problem..
Weezbo....

Mark

@ January 13, 2012 6:39 PM in I am stumped....

do you happen to have a recirc system on the hot side from the 13th or 14 th floor?
straight back to your water makers(Indirects?)
is there any possibility that the valves are Failing to cold?
if you tapped in with a quick fitting in the hot and ran it back in pex to the lower floor would that give you some chance to test those questions?
i think that i would look for a stuck check valve or sediments in the return side of a constant circ system .. the reason i say this is that the increased flow of the new pipe and heat exchangers may have Scrubbed the sediments clean on the new system at the mec room.....there by sending the sediments of the existing piping free clustering up working valves. i flushed the sediments at the water meter supply recently after removing the entirety of the existing pipe, the hot water maker i left in place and did not flush it ..it then jambed up the new valves so i flushed the tank and valves and it cleared...

Hope that helps.
Weezbo
*~/: )

something occurred to me , , you always do more than less, did you happen to install temp gauges in the existing C.R. and a Caleffi dirt cal prior to the recently installed Indirects?
maybe just flushing hot water out the dirt cal would clear the sediments maybe the new dedicate one tap pex recirc is over kill... i still think sediments the culprit ...

we like to see

@ November 6, 2011 8:39 PM in Radiant water temps

the temps maintained so that you have 70 degree F on the coldest day of the year inside your home . this is not a sure thing to design for buh it keeps us habby.

serendipitous window and door remodels with cascading glass expanses and garage doors left open are things that drastically alter the ability of any form of residential heating to overcome.

what will come across to asking a professional is that his answers might be somewhat different than you were thinking that you would hear.

Chris and Gordy are doing what they can to basically say that the number varies as the environment changes both in door and out.

outdoor reset is quick however weather responsive controls are slightly more expensive to predict the next variable to change in the equation . day before yesterday the slab had about 79 degree fluid rolling , yesterday the outdoor temps dove to about 15 18 below 0 F and changed to nearly 87 or so...
now, a professional could by doing some fancy pencil work , knowing the amount of windows and doors the sites topography and a host of other information be able to tell you just how much r value the insulation Under the slab might be...or knowing that info, tell you how much insulation is in the walls or ceilings... however, without a blower door test things could still be a bit sketchy on any vast anomalies ...

what that means is there are differences not only in the application of pipe to slab say , buh there are quite a few other details that enter into being able to say ,
" the temp should be" ....
and fire out a number.

quite a while ago an old contractor told me that you should always design the fluid / water temps to never exceed 100degrees F with radiant floor heating.

thats then, this is now .... however i do tend to like his thinking...
Weezbo
*~//: )

The long forgotten pipe harp ...

@ December 26, 2008 3:32 AM in copper Christmas project 08

:) Thank You . Have a harmonious holiday... *~/:)

i took a water line apart

@ November 29, 2008 5:20 AM in Tankless coils

this week and it had sand in it ..the inch and a quater line i replaced with 12 feet of 1" and 1/2 braided water hose , stainless steel king couplings and double breeze clampsi am running the boiler water thru Caleffi dirtcals and spun one on my transfer pump to purge the boiler tank in the TT delta prior to lashing up a new wood boiler and using its coil to communicate with the wood boiler hydronically for hot water production and the Taco X block for heating.. the dirtcals seem to be as advertised.... might want to look into lashing one up on the boiler side return... i think that uponor makes some pretty fine water variety of filtration system for chemical debris and various particulates in the water...

S controls

@ November 29, 2008 4:59 AM in Vitocontrol-s

are built to your specs..... now if you "Inherited it" or the interface that was provided by the building cannot make that communication jump , it is not like its "On You" to Make it work.. i think you may be better off going with the individual controllers for each boiler, setting them up with small differentials for lag lead..and finding who had it made to interface with what..

oil in the filter

@ November 29, 2008 4:47 AM in tiger loop promblems?

is the quickest way to get any tigerloop or canister filter to 'GO" i tried one of the first ultras i asked Dave at HASCO's to get some..i didnt like it as well as the combo as you cant see inside the bowl.. the other night my buddy lashed up a condensing oil boiler and of all the dumb luck the osv was spun around backwards..they dont go good that way..:) i do not know for certain buh it might be possible to get the supply and returns spun around the wrong way charlie and not get oil also. vac gages are cheap and handy to leave installed to check how much it is pulling...

i series R i series S

@ November 29, 2008 4:28 AM in am I wrong? customer service

Tim i often use the i series S two way zone valves for setpoint control and for the most part the three and four way for Reset there are dip switches on the side of the valve that you can chose perhaps therin the difugalties arise..some things look different to the minds eye..i went to a job a few weeks ago after a two way was set for reset buh it wasnt working right i changed the dip switches to mirror the ones previously selected and it immediately began to function correctly.. it could happen..might check...

this is a good question..

@ November 14, 2008 3:58 AM in Good small pump for filthy condensate

*~/:) i am not sure thats the best plan of attack. what i have at the moment is similar , my plan is to valve off the "Field side",... run it through my transfer pump with a Caleffi dircal and thin out the garbage left over after flushing the system.. it is my belief , though i cannot prove it, that the glycol loop that is hundreds of feet long ,..feeding the existing system and a radiant floor in stainless , that i flushed out and purged today,has a leak underground ..its 3 inch iron welded pipe and is bleeding heat through the ground at the moment ...this could be an insulation issue,.. though i tend to think 'its a leak'..i have a sample to send off buh first i must identify the glycol.. you are somewhat in similar straights. if you have no means of identifying where its taking on mud,... cleaning it the way i am considering may not be altogether easy way for you to go . sometimes in instances like yours , dropping the pipe to a flat with oversized pipe and a plugged valved take off and a short riser by street will allow a place to 'Catch particulates and by cranking open the valve, a way to flush the chubby pipe or clean it out ahead of the circ with some drill driven brush or in some cases a large screwdriver something that will clear the valve to allow the accumulation to exit the valve.. just a thought..hope it helps..

install a suntec

@ November 6, 2008 10:58 AM in Losing prime on oil boiler

filter with o.s.v. and vacuum gage ahead of the tigerloop... if you have problems abandon that line as any vacuum leak you cannot see is an EPA violation waiting to happen.

this is sorta a wag

@ October 28, 2008 2:03 PM in Pinhole leaks copper piping

erosion corrosion is velocity and failure to ream pipe. outside that look for pieces of shiney Calvy pipe...it doesn't really belong in heating systems and many munis have continued to weed the stuff out everywhere that they can within the potable water system....

heres where martial arts comes in handy *~/:)

@ October 28, 2008 1:55 PM in circulators not working

use the old palm heel strike to the face of the motor..:)

up stairs is on

@ October 17, 2008 11:26 PM in Radiant Heat Not Working

open the zone valve manually to the radiant.. you would have some heat in 4 - 5 hrs.. Taco zvc or SR 5 04 ?

I am interested in your pellet boiler

@ September 9, 2008 2:17 AM in Tims pellet boiler

i saw a Rika Aqua in an undisclosed location :) the other day and i thought to my self i wonder how Tim is doing and how his pellet boilers doing fuel wise in these times.. i like the way they look and i think that they would be a HUGE benefit in commercial boiler arrays where nat Gas was unavailable and fuel oil boilers are about the only game in town. do they have a lot of maintenance involved with their upkeep? is the dust an issue in the stack or near boiler area? when you clean them is it a difficult process? have you had any costs associated with the augers ? sorry for so many questions buh your the only one i know is owning a pellet fired piece of equipment for years..

care for a second opinion?

@ September 9, 2008 1:38 AM in Viessmann Vitirod 100

i might say to you a professional , that the BTU requirements might outweigh the manufacturers moniker or the colour of the Skin.. i have so many things keeping me busy these days that i havent seen smaller mpos that match the viessman.. so if i am wrong and there are smaller MPOs being made perhaps you will feel free to help me on this one.. i just checked on the virtual trade show .. wells *~//:) i see a 74 .... looks like there is something New i Love this place :) i have to say that was very cool thing ..i would dial in the boiler based on the required BTU for the building though and space considerations is also some minor technicality at times..i have installed both boilers and i have no problem with either boiler.

work intensive + time consuming

@ September 8, 2008 1:00 PM in Building my own copper coils in storage tank

Might want to consider HR's thought on the plate exchanger, Tacos X=bloc is my choice and i am thinking a 4 way mixer ahead of it tight to the near boiler piping ...with a paralleled branch to a separate "hydronic fan coil ahead of the X block set to water temps exceeding secondary high temp cut out.. a friend of mine has a boxed in and insulated water truck tanker with two 3/4 coils of 80 K that i think should have been connected off of one inch reverse return when they first installed it theres no strainer on the system on either side to me thatsa no no too. The HRs into Caleffi products , you ought to see if he can post you a picture of a dirt separator way more bang for the Buck ..my 2 cents *~//: )

THAT was a Competition !

@ August 11, 2008 2:10 PM in Making France eat their words

no sence playing in the sand box when you can throw down with some real competition . *~/:) fractions of a tenth of a second is the difference in 21 strikes a second and 14 strikes a second..buh that s another story :) all of the teams strove to win THAT Race buh many of them shatterd the World record for the event ! i'd say congratulations were in order for all of the contestants that really was a heck of a fight :)

you have some good advise...

@ August 10, 2008 3:26 PM in Help PLeASe!

bring up the oil nozzel size to produce heat that cycles with a steam system is the easiest fix for the boiler .. as an aside to that until you have it running properly you really wont have clear information on which to steer by... the difference in fuel availability and price per BTU though can have plenty of bearing on a decision here the cost of oil is astronomical huge quantities of people are seriously considering leaving this year because they cannot see the way that they will be able to maintain their homes this winter. the government energy "Gimmie" does little to nothing to defray the costs of energy here. the gimmick of reducing the carbon foot print by taxing us even more for less actual btu's per gallon and higher prices just doesn't work. having said that , natural gas dual fuel like Steam head suggests might be a far better deal when you consider a long term picture.. that had Options ... man i type slow :)) you posted the picture of your boiler while i plinked away at the keys :) and ten more while i did that :))