Best Of
Re: AO Smith Gas Water Heater Warranty Replacement
I see an installer defect not a heater manufacturer defect!
pecmsg
Re: Combustion air for cast iron boiler
@ajping3830 asked: "How can I figure if there is enough combustion air in the shop space? There will not be any additional rooms, just wide open."
A confined space is considered any space that does not have at least 50 cubic feed for every 1000 BTU of burner input. The Shop is much larger than that, so you have sufficient amount of combustion air if you use two 12 x 12 louver openings from the boiler room to the shop.
The total shop + boiler room will have a total of 14,400 cubic feet volume to draw combustion air from. that means that you can have up to 288,000 BTU input and still not have a confined space. but as tight as you are making that space, I would not go much over 220,000 BTU. Since you boiler has a 100,000 input and it doesn't look like you will be adding a separate water heater any time soon, I think you will be fine.
Now you don't need to worry about cold air from the outside louvers freezing any pipes. Some welding shops do however add exhaust fans to clear fumes from the work space. especially if you have the ability to bring automobiles or other combustion engine equipment inside to work on them. That can be a real problem. I was working on a problem boiler that was connected to a shop that was 5 times larger than your shop. The exhaust fan would wreak havoc on the flame and the venting system whenever they operated the exhaust fan with all the garage and shop doors closed. The exhaust fan would suck air the wrong direction from the boiler's exhaust vent pipe. That would blow out the electronic ignition pilot and cause a flame failure signal to stop the burners from operating.
Re: AO Smith Gas Water Heater Warranty Replacement
If the original installing plumber (company) was reputable and ethical, they could clearly see that they did a less than stellar job soldering that connection. Although 4 years is a long time, If I was that contractor, I would fix that for free and ask you if you wanted a service agreement that covered routine maintenance on that water heater and the heating system. If you declined the service agreement, I would still fix that for free, then use a wire brush to clean up all that calcification and rust. Spray paint the rusted portion of the water heater and tell you to keep an eye on that connection to see if more corrosion formed in the following 6 months or year. Then we can address the warranty issue at that time. It is clearly an installer workmanship failure and this guy sounds like he is in it for the money, not for the satisfaction of a job well done at a fair price.
Re: Steam Boiler Pressure & Some Of My Adventures
I don't think there's enough information to say how long this boiler will last.
Re: US vs. Chinese CI fittings for new boiler + piping
If I can help it, I always buy American even if it's a few bucks more. I'm a firm believer in the old saying
Buy American The Job You Save May Be Your Own!
CTETeach
Re: US vs. Chinese CI fittings for new boiler + piping
In my limited experience I've never seen a fitting that rusted out, it's always a nipple anyway. Run what you brung
Re: US vs. Chinese CI fittings for new boiler + piping
Only did 3 new steam installs and some replacement piping on others.
It seemed logical to use china fittings above water line where piping drains dry and US below the water line because of thickness, quality of material etc.
Always malleable, no cast iron around in the Midwest.
JUGHNE
Re: Staged boiler retrofit design questions
Understood, thank you. The tanks are remote, piped up and over equipment via 1/2" Cu. I should have the ability to pipe that 1/2" line anywhere assuming that the connection is the PONPC?
fwmech
Re: Steam Boiler Pressure & Some Of My Adventures
That MegaSteam is an excellent boiler, but whoever installed it completely disregarded the piping instructions. Your system will run much better when it's repiped. What model is it- should be MST-something.
Re: Combustion air for cast iron boiler
People tend to overestimate how tight a spray foam building is. Usually is better than regular construction but can still leak a fair bit if a couple of details are not handled well. Even if super tight, a power vent unit doesn't exhaust all that many CFM of air and it will take a heck of a tight building to get it any measurable depressurization in a large workshop. Power vent units are also much less sensitive to building pressure.
If the boiler does end up enclosed in a small room, than it needs a high / low vent to the open workshop space provided that workshop space is big enough.
Kaos