Best Of
Re: 1966 heating oil tank
Well the tank is 60 years old it probably does have some sludge. These tanks don't last forever so I would start saving for a replacement.
We can't talk price on here but I will just say I would get other quotes. Changing it during the summer is best to do a planned change over rather than an emergency one.
You could buy some oil treatment "HOT" is one brand you can look on line..
The oil line could be rerouted to pull oil from the top of the tank keeping the suction pipe 6" up from the tank bottom to buy you some time.
60 years is a good run for a tank. If no signs of it leaking I would budget for a new tank and run the one you have for a year or so.
Re: Radiant Floor Heating System – Is a 10°F Single Space - Same Zone Temperature Difference Acceptable?
That is not acceptable and you shouldn't let the builder make it your problem.
Re: Kodak Moment: Yet Another Oil Boiler that had been "maintained"
The cost of making a claim in the long term might be far more than just paying for it.
mattmia2
Re: Repair or Replace Aging Heating System with Gas Conversion Gun?
The primary control, shown in the last pic, is failing. One of the components in the flame-detection circuit has become unstable. We have a bunch of these burners in our customer base, and generally replacing that control with the current version solves the problem. The new version also has some diagnostic capability that can tell you why it locked out, can display the flame signal etc.
These burners run very well in W-M Gold boilers when properly set up, and I see no need to completely replace them.
I'd have a pro come in and replace the control, do a combustion test to make sure it's running properly, fix the leak on the fill valve or pipe above the measuring cup, check the expansion tank for proper air charge etc.
IIRC, the indirect tank is a re-branded Triangle Tube unit. The corrosion is coming from bad joints above the tank. Have them replaced and you should be OK.
Re: Radiant Floor Heating System – Is a 10°F Single Space - Same Zone Temperature Difference Acceptable?
Assuming you are referring to air temperature, no, that is not at all acceptable. A transfer plate type system will require a higher water temperature to put out a similar BTU per linear foot as concrete, so it's quite probable that the installers combined the two into one and do not have enough tubing/plates and/or are using too low of a water temp for the plate system. Either way, this is a design/install error and needs to be corrected by the designer/installer. They may be able to split it into two zones or even balance the flow to get each system to work as intended, but they may need to turn it into a dual temp system or even tear the floor apart and add more tubing/plates.
Upon reading this again, you refer to "thermostats" and "sensors" as if plural. If there are multiple sensors/stats, there can not be just one zone. Something seems to have been lost in translation.
GroundUp
Re: Mechanics Institute is Now Accepting Applications for the Fall 2025 Semester
This is the Finishing School in our region....Golden opportunity.....Mad Dog
Re: Copper to Pex in hydronic heating for DIY
In my opinion, you, as a first time pipe-sweater, have a far far greater chance of permanent success with sharkbites than you do with a torch.
Re: Main vent questions - newbie
Two #1s will likely be adequate. IMO you’ll probably see more success speeding up the venting on the far radiators and slowing it down on the near radiators than you will going crazy with the main venting.
Like others on here I’ve found the Big Mouth vents leak a lot of steam and I removed mine because I was losing 3/4 inch or so of water per week. Now I have two MOM #1s on each of my mains and lose basically nothing.
Tezak
Re: Literature on Geothermal
@DCContrarian it helps to use the numbers of the project.
Total pipe length 3400'
Installed @12" OC for a field total of 3400 SQ FT.
If we are to consider the storage capacity within a foot of the tubing, that equals 6800 cubic feet.
Wet clay ( and boy was it wet when I put the bulk in February!) weighs 110 pounds per cubic foot.
So my fields have 748,000 pounds of wet clay within a foot of the tubing.
It does indeed have a capacity of about a half a BTU per pound, and cooling it from 50 to 40 would yield 3.7 million BTU.
But that is not how it works. It does have great conductivity and will keep equalizing out to a larger extent than that foot either way.
@GW I will play with alternating fields manually. I have an odd number of loops ,7.
Each of the loops is a 10 pass by 45' or so, and separated by it's neighbor by 4 feet or so. There is also a 10' wide slot I had to leave out for the side sewer.
This is important, because our observations with my brother's field, a big 30x60 with 1800 feet of tubing in the 1800SF would cold soak pretty badly deep into the season. His soils were drier and less dense and not good conductors as @DCContrarian was talking about. We did not get much edge effect and that large contiguous field got below freezing by the end of the season.
I will manually run 3 fields that are separated by idle fields and the 4' and that 10'. That will be for the very low demand fall shoulder. I will watch for the differential of entering to leaving loop water and when it drops below 10 degrees it is a good time to change up.
Then I will dog off those 3 and run the other 4. I won't know how well it will work until we get into it, but I am significantly overlooped. The common conversion is 600' of 3/4" @ 12" OC per ton. I have 3400' and a 3 ton manual J.
The idea is to let the first 3 recover based on good conductivity and run with that. I may have to tap all 7 at the worst of it. My heating degree day is 23 F and cooling degree day is 79, so yes it is very mild compared to most. The straits of Juan De Fuca are only a few miles away and moderate the temperatures considerably.
skyking1