Best Of
Re: Seeking Guidance on Steam Boiler Issues (1928 Home with 1.95 Million BTU Weil-McLain)
I just saw your other thread, which has more information and better pictures.
It may be a good idea to merge the two, or close this one. -m
mattmich
Re: Retirement second thoughts
I retired a year and half ago at 55. I’ve been in the field since getting out of high school. Did 35 years with major gas utility couldn’t do the commute anymore ( 48 miles) so I retired. Was losing my mind 4 months later. Got an instructor job teaching HVAC at an unnamed for profit trade school. Worked part time 2 days a week day and night classes. I loved sharing my experiences with the techs of the future. The experience was amazing I feel I missed my calling spending all those years in the truck when the last 10 should have been in the training room. I spent a year there then resigned, it’s a Ponzi scheme! they just want the money they don’t care about the students or the quality of the education. When I started we had 25 students in a class, very challenging to do labs like that but we got it done. By August of this year it was 49 to a class. They just keep signing people up even if we can’t give them a quality education or even their moneys worth. I could not believe how they ripped these kids off. Trades are big again there is a demand for these schools. I graduated a Vocational high school and went right to work. Now these kids have to pay for an education that use to be offered for free. I miss it a lot but don’t regret my decision. Since I left I have received 8 texts from students that I taught over the year that have since graduated and have gotten good paying jobs in the trade . That made it all worth while knowing I made a difference. I’m now working on designing a HVAC basic electric program for the county community college adult class that I will teach in the new year. So my advice to you is share your knowledge anyway you can, be it teaching or posting on the wall. Good Luck
Re: Radiator-Baseboard-Piping Complexities
You mentioned a 3800 btu/ hr. load in the new room?
3/4 pex at 4 gpm gets you 40,000 btu/hr.
Here is what a 3/4 pex loop 100' long, 4 ells 4 couplings, looks like.
So a good match for your radiator, with under 4 fps velocity, reasonable head.
If you know the exact length and how many fittings you will use. Go to the free calculator at ppi website, plug in actual numbers. Plastic Pipe Institute.
Here is an example of an engineered LVL fix. After the fact repair 😚
hot_rod
Re: Working only on Aux, but not on Heat?
Aux would use more electricity than heat if you had a heat pump installed. This looks like an electric resistance only system, so it doesn't matter whether its wired to come on with heat or aux, it will cost the same either way.
GGross
Re: Interesting and naive approach to building a copper radiator
Gotta love the workmanship.
Intplm.
Re: Water in basement from steam boiler need a fix
Hello steam1916,
Kind of vague, is your system actively loosing water ? So the boiler is leaking out of a hose and filled the sump pit and it then overflowed onto the basement floor ?
Are the valves closed all the way Red Arrows. Air Vents at the Yellow arrows. The Air vents close when steam gets to them.
109A_5
Re: Pilot light goes out in the middle of the night **SOLVED!**
the orifice and openings in the pilot burner, not the main burner, although it sounds like that pilot burner is under a decade old so unless there are chunks in your gas the orifice shouldn't be partly clogged
mattmia2
Re: Asking for advice for combi boiler replacement and hydronic system upgrades
Many papers written on the topic, and the founder of this site wrote a book about it. in essence when you "pump away" from the expansion tank the system static pressure increases a little when the circulator operates, when you are "pumping toward" the expansion tank the static pressure drops a little which can cause several unwanted problems. Establishing the expansion tank as a point of no pressure change is also advantageous as this is where a fill valve will be commonly tied into the boiler system. I'm sure there are people able to better explain this than me, and there are systems that function just fine with poor piping strategies, but its always a good idea to follow best practices from the start in my opinion
GGross
Re: Please comment on a boiler re-install
@GGross: Surprisingly, i am able to get modest heat and certainly enough to prevent freezing out of the viessmann notwithstanding all of the forum chatter on isolation of the pumps. It may be because of the oversized??? grundfoss pump which is set on level 3 or perhaps the undersized 3/4” pex???. Previously, I had a B&G 100? Which worked perfectly. The Slant Fin is always and rather quickly tripping off on the high limit; I don’t think it is getting enough flow. I don’t use the Slant Fin at all.
