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Re: Water heat zone running continuously

Try removing a wire from the Nest - either one - and see if the zone still calls for heat. If it does continue to call for heat, there's something wrong with the wiring. If the heating is off, it could be the thermostat.

Alan (California Radiant) Forbes

1

Re: Steam Heater - Pipes and Heater is rust on new Boiler

Is this a slant fin boiler? What is the manufacturer date on the boiler? How long ago did Slant Fin close its doors?

STEAM DOCTOR

1

Re: Masonry Chimney repair vs. vented vs. ventless gas log

Gas fireplace with a stainless-steel liner in the chimney.

pecmsg

2

Re: Weil McLain steam boiler and water treatment

Probably shouldn't have said "unfortunately". However, the point is this: the buffer range of the 8 way seems to be from 10 to 10.5. What that means, however, is that the concentration of 8 way — the amount present in the water or initially put in — can vary over an extremely wide range, but the pH will stay in that narrow range. This is why buffers are so handy! But also why they are pesky — once there is any significant concentration of a buffer system in the water, that's the pH range you are going to have. If it's what you want, you are delighted. If it's not what you want, you are left with no choice but to get rid of the buffer system and start over…

Jamie Hall

1

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.

Jamie Hall

2

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

2

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

2

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.