Best Of
Re: Need some advice for a vintage Peerless radiator valve hookup
5th pic from the top is the radiator leg off the floor like it looks like it is or is that an optical illusion?
Looks like the pipe is holding the radiator up in the air,
Re: Need some advice for a vintage Peerless radiator valve hookup
Is this first floor or second floor? Shouldn't make any difference if it was gutted. What he should have done was bought the fittings and screw them into the radiator while it was on site and got a center -center measurement. 2d best would be to put the supply and return a little farther apart…to close and you end up with what you got. If there is a joist in the way you make the supply and return farther apart
Re: Oversized overtall chimney?
If your primary concern is cold air infiltration, then seal the upper envelope and reduce stack losses by installing a barometric damper so it's not exhausting at standby. The Neutral Pressure Plane follows the leaks. If it's high on the first floor or higher, you really don't have an upper seal and your house is just one big chimney. Put a cork in it then provide some relief as low as possible below the NPP to move it downwards and thus move the infiltration to the basement- not living space.
A high mass boiler is going to have some stack losses at standby, but you can minimize those losses with a baro. and an interlocked vent damper with a spill switch on the baro.
If your boiler was sized properly for the EDR and you down-fire the boiler, you are shooting yourself in the foot.
Re: Oil furnace rumble and smoke
A Beckett that is operating properly does not "Rumble" or "Make Smoke". What is happening is you have a burner that needs professional attention. Do Not operate it any more because all that smoke is making the repairs needed more complicated.
Do you have the recommended annual maintenance for your oil burner heating system? It may be a good time to start on an annual maintenance program with a qualified professional.
Re: Oil furnace rumble and smoke
you need an oil burner tech. could be something is plugged, could be something is out of adjustment and it just barely worked and different weather or something pushed it to the point where it doesn't work now.
mattmia2
Re: Oversized overtall chimney?
WAIT a second here. Right near the end of @dandub1960 's 11:04 comment above I read "distribution system is two pipe stream" .
That's fine, but makes all the comments above about mod/cons and so on quite irrelevant.
Now. Let's get back to some basics. Our OP's complaint appears to be that the house is draughty. Quite possible, given the age and the mention of metal framed windows — which were junk when they were installed and haven't improved with time.
There seems to be an impression that the problem is the oversize chimney. That probably isn't helping much, but is unlikely to be the major problem.
Assuming it is a significant problem, though, the only approach which will do much to address that problem is to restrict the chimney itself. Since there is a draught hood on the boiler, messing with the boiler air supply isn't going to address the problem, unless the boiler and chimney were placed in a sealed room. Difficult to do, but not impossible. Then you could add an outdoor air supply to that otherwise sealed room and let it go.
A cheaper approach will be to insert an appropriate sized liner in the flue, connected to the boiler draught hood, and seal between that and the flue (airtight seal at the bottom, screened at the top , or alternatively fill between the liner and the existing flue. Which I don't really recommend…
Re: Radiant flow not pushing fast enough
I suppose it depends on the design of the valve, not all valves shut off the hot port 100%. ASSE listed scald protection valves can shut off the hot 100%.
You should pipe up a few demos and report back :)
Regardless, this is how most if not all three way thermostatic manufacturers require a 3 way thermostatic to be piped, for hydronic mixing use. Piped this way it will work, piped in any other configuration you may not always get the results you expect.
hot_rod
Re: Radiant flow not pushing fast enough
Though not impossible, I don't think your problem is the circulator.
What happens on a call for heat?
Does the heat call get satisfied?
Does the boiler cycle on high limit?
What is the supply and return water temp?
I'm not sure your circulator is in the right place in relation to the thermostatic mixing valve(in fact i think it isn't but i'm not an expert on that).
mattmia2
Re: Oversized overtall chimney?
Again, forget about the equipment until you fix the thermal envelope of the structure. If you do, it will take far less boiler to do the job. If you just throw more equipment at the problem the utility will thank you for wasting so much energy and paying for it. You don't have to rebuild the house but close the barn doors then think about the boiler. BTW, the standard is to have a blower door test done with infrared thermography, which will generate numbers on just how leaky the house is as a baseline. Once you tighten it up, you can re-test, calculate the improvement, which can then be used to calculate the savings and if further improvement would pay for itself. You can install a TurboBlaster 2000 with the flux capacitor and inverter raterfrazzer but if the building is a sieve you're wasting money.