Best Of
Re: Banging Radiators at start up
Really important to distinguish between a water hammer and expansion — and can be hard to do! The pinging type noises you mention are, more likely than not, expansion — but locating what is sticking and slipping can be tricky. A louder bang type noise is likely to be water hammer.
Both can happen on warm up — and disappear once the system is heated up.
Worse, both can "telegraph: through the piping, making the actual source difficult to find. All that mumbo-jumbo aside, I'm thinking that if you do have water hammer type banging, it's worse on the radiators with shared risers, and that it is because one or both of the in-floor runouts to each pair is either not sloped enough, or sloped in the wrong direction and accumulating a small amount of condensate as it warms up. If they really are arranged connected by a T with a riser coming in the leg and the runouts on the cross, it's almost inevitable.
Re: UPS26-150F speed shaft broke
The delta you're seeing probably isn't under full load, so it would rise exponentially when all zones are open on a design day. Many of these systems are set up as a lead/lag so boiler 2 never runs unless boiler 1 can't keep up which also sounds much like what you're seeing. The circulator did not "fail", the speed shaft broke most likely from some trauma. If it's moving the fluid adequately, you can just leave it alone and disregard the broken shaft for another 10+ years until it's due for replacement.
GroundUp
Re: Lochinvar Knight KB 80 banging noises
The air vent on the boiler is not really an air purger, it catches air trapped in the coils to some extent. It's called a high point vent
You could manually purge all the circuits but that allows fresh water in which has air in it.
It really should have a central air purger to catch air that comes out of solution every time the water temperature increases.
Those coil type boilers are tougher to purge, on occasion I have opened the relief valve on the boiler to get some air out.
A pop or banging noise may indicate air is in some of the boiler coils, or a limescale build up inside the coils prevent good heat transfer. You might run a hydronic cleaner to clean the inside of those coils.
You are sure the primary pump is actually spinning, not stuck?
hot_rod
Re: First time doing heat load calc: Whoa, is my boiler 2x oversized?
If you’re replacing with oil again, there’s no point redoing the calculations. The best you can do is 80kbtu input, so 64kbtu-ish output. You didn’t have 34kbtu/hr of solar heat gain.
Re: Plumber advises to keep air inlet when removing house trap
Good point Grasshopper, but it's no worse than a street manhole cover. I'm keep my house trap and my Fresh Air Inlet.....Mad Dog
Re: Boiler Replacement Sizing Question
Do not go larger than an EG-40.
If it was mine id probably go EG-35.
ChrisJ
Re: Weil-McLain WGO with RIELLO burner?
All three of them are good burners. I am not fond of Riellos myself but they are good burners. It's the parts they use I don't care for but that is just me. Most people love them.
Re: First time doing heat load calc: Whoa, is my boiler 2x oversized?
As a point of reference, I maintain a 4-unit condo building in the Boston suburbs. We have two WGO-5 boilers that burn a total of about 1200 gals/yr, which happens to be almost exactly double your consumption rate. I've calculated our building heat loss 4 different ways, 3 of which used actual oil consumption or boiler run times at known outdoor temps, and all the heat loss numbers agree within 10%, so I have high confidence in them. Our heat loss is 90,000 BTU/hr, and since the math is basically linear, by comparison your heat loss (in a similar HDD zone) would be half, since you consume half the amount of oil. Which puts your heat loss at 45,000 BTU/hr, quite close to the 50,000 BTU/hr that @EBEBRATT-Ed predicted earlier.
We also have massively oversized boilers, and I plan on downsizing to WGO-2's when the time comes. But since you say you're doing the install and weight matters, you might want to look at the Biasi B10/3 or B10/4. Those are around 300 pounds, much smaller and easier to wrangle than the 800-pound monster UO-3. I do not have any experience with the Biasi, but I have done some reading on it in the course of looking for alternatives to our WGO-5's. There are a number of people here who have experience with Biasi's, and there are a number of threads discussing their reliability, etc.
The downside of the Biasi is that the plumbing is all different from your existing WGO setup, so if you can wrassle a new WGO in there like @EdTheHeaterMan said, that would be simpler plumbing-wise.
jesmed1
Re: Replacing Near Boiler Piping with Drop Header
How old is your SGO-7?
If it was mine and it is heating well (sounds like it is) I would leave it as is. It won't save you any money on fuel and you can probably spend the money better on pipe insulation and tightening up the house. If and when you have to replace the boiler that would be the time to re-pipe. We see many boilers that are "piped wrong" and "shouldn't work" but they do. If it is steaming well and the water level is not bouncing or surging, and there is no water hammer I would leave it as is.
How does the size of the boiler compare to your connected EDR of the radiation?
Re: Logamatic Alternative
The Buderus distributors by me offer the Hydrostat 3250 Plus. If you're lucky, you can get one in Buderus Blue. You'll also need to change the well. Actually, make sure you specify what boiler you have because well insertion depth is critical. If the system already has an external LWCO, you don't need the Hydrostat Electrowell, but redundancy never hurt anyone.
HVACNUT