Best Of
Re: [Solved] Taco VT2218 Rattling Sound
That boiler, as per the installation manual should have a full size bypass or primary secondary piping.
The table #1 shows the minimum flow, I doubt that pump, flowing through a 3/4 zone will get you anywhere close to the 14 gpm min. Much less the 18 gpm suggested “normal” rate. Maybe just crank it to its highest speed, although the noise is another issue. There is a reason you keep eating circulators.
In addition I think the boiler oversized by a bit. A heatload calc on three home would determine that. Adding up all the heat emitters is another way to check the boiler output match up.
I think you are headed towards a repipe, maybe even a smaller boiler, although cranking down the red know should lower the boiler firing. Look inside as you adjust, does the flame size decrease? The label on the boiler shows a low end firing of 78,750 btu/hr
hot_rod
Re: [Solved] Taco VT2218 Rattling Sound
My initial thought is you have air in the pipes that hasn't been purged out. How long has it been doing this?
Try taking out the ifc from the circulator if it's in place. Integral flow check valve. That could be vibrating causing the noise.
" On some zones, as you'll see in the video, the pump runs at around 58 watts while pushing only ~6GPM. Does this mean that the pump is undersized?" Not necessarily undersized. Is 6gpm enough to heat that zone. My experience with this 2218 is it runs full power 58 -65 watts until the delta is satisfied and then it backs off significantly to 7-11 watts until Delta exceeds parameters then it goes back to full power. There is not much for middle ground.
bjohnhy
Re: Calling Peerless 63-series Owners: A Venting Mystery
@109A_5 " If your boiler runs once an hour that's 24 minutes a day that you are not paying to burn fuel to push air out through a restrictive venting system."
My boiler runs once every two hours on a cold day… and the heat is not wasted. As I found out, the steam goes significantly farther up the risers when I'm using the installed vents.
@ethicalpaul "..a #1 is too small for 80 feet of main"
Agreed, but it's a #1 Maid-o-Mist (or whatever they call the only main vent they sell) + a Gorton #2. It was going to be TWO Gortons but one arrived broken and I ran with just the one for a while.
The size of the main is irrelevant. What matters is how quickly steam can be made to heat it up, and whether the air can be evacuated quickly enough so the process is not impeded.
My next step will be to downfire the boiler from 125 to 88 MBTU and see how that works. I will report in my DIY thread.
mattmich
Re: System 2000, nearly double the cost of Weil McLain, is it worth it?
On hot water I like to use primary secondary all the time if I can.
Its just my opinion.
Todays boiler in my opinion are not as robust as the older stuff.
Todays boiler hold less water
I like the idea of keeping the heat exchanger happy so the boiler will last as long as possible.
Having a dedicated circ to just do the boiler and near boiler piping makes sense to me. You will always have the correct flow through the hx no matter what is going on elsewhere in the system. Although Pri/sec is not a substitute for low return temp protection in most cases it will provide that as well
Re: System 2000, nearly double the cost of Weil McLain, is it worth it?
We put a System 2000 in an older house with mediocre insulation. It is also our hot water supply.
The summer savings were jaw-dropping. Also, the basement was cooler, so reduced AC cost. This is not applicable to you as you are running electric hot water.
Our winter savings is high too, maybe closer to 50%. But we replaced a WW2 boiler that was failing. And added a fresh air intake. And added 2 zones so can keep the upstairs cooler.
I would highly recommend the fresh air intake. More efficient. And makes the house less drafty. And runs quieter.
»»That 2-year pay-back period quoted is not possible, especially if you are replacing a newish boiler and running electric water.
Greening
Re: Funny but not so funny
Well, better that your water line leaked into the septic than vice versa. 😄
jesmed1
Re: Oil Boiler Water Marks on Side of Unit Behind Paneling, Cast Iron
File for the warranty ASAP. don't wait. The sooner they know the more warranty credit you will get. The warranty is pro rated the older the boiler is.
You don't need to do the work now, you need to get the claim in now.
Re: ProFlo Press Fittings & Ridgid Press Tool
I see they offer RLS jaws for several ProPress systems including Ridgid and Milwaukee.
PC7060
Re: Vitodens 100- normal operating sound?
Such a weird low pitch, doesn't sound like a bearing or shaft. Really weird
Grallert
Re: The "equalizer" is mis-named. It does nothing to equalize anything.
Every time I see this come back up to the front of the line, I laugh…. I had this debate with Paul because I learned what was in the books so long ago that it was as if that dimension "A" and the Equalizer were second nature to me. And when you know something… YOU KNOW IT!
Paul's experiment and video showed me that on a small residential system there is not much pressure drop from one end of the main to the other. That whole steam chest of the boiler pushing water out the return backwards did not need 28" of dimension "A" to force the water back into the boiler.
But if the pipes are restricted with years of sediment, and we are talking about a rather large building, then that dimension “A” can certainly help the water get back to the boiler. But when doing the testing on a small residential system, at such low pressures, that is well cared for, and probably has no sediment in any of the wet returns, then you basically have a U tube manometer with equal pressure on both ends of the main, at the boiler and past the last radiator, at the last drop into the return.
Paul finally made me change my opinion of the whole thing. Those pictures in the book are only illustrations. They did not use glass pipes and measure the pressure differences to see inside those pipes. They made educated guesses based on what they found with previous systems. Some of those systems were built before the Carbon Club members made the 1.5 PSI rule that we all use today. I might guess that 50 to 100 PSI steam might have a bit more friction traveling through some of those old steam pipes and that the dimension "A" may have been more that 28" to overcome the 2 or 3 PSI difference on those older 100 PSI systems. Ya never really know where those old beliefs, guides and rules came from, and why they are still in use today.
There is a story about how the railroad track gauge (width) is based on the Roman Chariot wheel base. As the road ways were traveled by these chariots they made groves and ruts as many carts rolled over the same path over and over. If you designed a chariot with a different wheelbase, your wheels would soon fail trying to find their way into the existing groves. If you didn't want your carts to have constant wheel failures you adopted the standard wheelbase as all the chariots. This lasted for centuries and when the railways and steam locomotives were introduced, the existing wheelbase was already an engineering standard and they had no reason to change it.
Is this truth or an old urban legend? Who knows? It is a good story to explain the odd dimension of 4' 8.5" or 143.5 cm as the standard rail gauge in the USA. Such a strange number to use. And Roman Chariots were never used in the 2 and 3 centuries in the Americas. We weren't even called the Americas yet! But you can easily fit a team of 2 horses side by side within that 4' 8.5" wheelbase so the horses didn't lose their footing in the ruts.
But now that all the tracks are 4' 8.5" wide, then all future tracks will be 4' 8.5" even if there is a better dimension for future needs. It is that way because that is the way we learned it. That weird number is kind of like Dimension “A” in all the old engineering books.