Best Of
Re: What was the best MacGuyver moment you actually saw on a job site?
you must've had a tee and a cap or a male and female adapter or something. the galvanized in my mom's house had a tee and plug for a 90 where there would have been no other reason for it other than they were short a 3/4 galvanized ell.
mattmia2
Re: Electrical
Whoever gave you the hypothetical scenario does not have a grasp of real world conditions. The fact that you are using steam as the space heating source and a tankless coil as the DHW source eliminates the need for a summer/winter switch. If there is no call for heat the water temperature in the boiler will not make steam to heat the space. The burner will only make enough heat to heat the DHW. Since you need DHW all year by definition, the boiler minimum temperature of 150° with a maximum temperature of 180° will never heat the space and will only heat the DHW. There is never a reason to operate the "Summer Switch" at any time to prevent space heating. Unless. Of course, it could be a trick question to see if you put the switch in there somewhere or explain why you don’t need it.
In order to get one thermostat to operate two boilers without using a 24 VAC source from one of the two boilers requires an independent 24 volt source that is not connected to one of the boilers. The Switching Relay does that by having its own 120 VAC source powering the on board 24 VAC transformer that will provide the low voltage circuit for one thermostat to operate the relay. That relay has 2 sets of contacts that can operate both boilers with separate circuits using separate contacts on the same relay. This isolates the boiler circuits so both boilers can operate independently from the one thermostat while turning off the power supply to the other spoiler for some reason, and will not in any way affect the operation of the remaining operating boiler.
Re: heating oil tank manufacturer's warranty voided by transfer of oil from the old tank?
This is always an issue. Customers would prefer to not throw away oil they paid for.
@HVACNUT has the correct answer.
The other alternative is to burn the old tank down to just below 1/4 of a tank and then install the new tank.
On the other hand, how will the tank MFG find out what went in the tank if no one tells them?
The tank MFG are doing a CYA.
Re: Radiant Snowmelt Tubing Size and Placement- Under Eaves
Food for thought in your design .. Drainage
Big Ed_4
Re: Radiant Snowmelt Tubing Size and Placement- Under Eaves
Here are the classifications of snowmelt design. Bottom line…how much snow and how quickly do you want to melt?
Of course the faster the desired melt, the more boiler power you need. I would guess 200 btu/ sq ft or more for a system like that.
What will it be powered by, it will not be a cheap date to run.
hot_rod
Re: Boiler Header Manifold
As long as there is not too much Chinesezium in the welding rod used.
Re: If you are not using AI....
I've had good results by asking very specific incremental questions that lead up to the answer for the bigger question. You can sort of hack the AI into showing its work and giving correct answers to smaller problems. Then you can ask it to consider it's previous answers when answering the bigger question. But yes, definitely be careful! I was working on some website integration coding stuff (of which I have zero knowledge) and using ChatGPT to guide me through the process. I had some initial success, but once it got really technical it led me on an hours long circular wild goose chase. One of the harder things to calibrate for initially is unbridled confidence with which answers are given. It's like your buddy who "knows" everything, but really knows pretty much nothing 😂
Re: Electric Anode rods
Hi and yes, @mattmia2 . But it's sort of a bean-counter's guess. How can the manufacturer know in anything other than a very general way what water the heater will see? Powered rods cost more, but might be a better one-size-fits-all solution. 😎
Yours, Larry
Re: Off grid heating/ac minisplit efficiency
Hi, My experience with off grid stuff has been clear that pure sine wave power is needed for electronics. Even modified sine wave is considered to be "dirty power" and makes electronics get all glitchy. Even LEDs have problems with anything but clean power.
Yours, Larry
Re: Steam Take-off piping
If you also put a drip back to the boiler return off the end of that extra header, it should be OK. Otherwise you may have problems. But why? Surely it might have been possible to find a harder way to pipe that?
