Best Of
Re: Trying to Narrow Temperature Difference Between Floors
@MikeC_3 It is awfully hard to balance a steam system after the heating season is over. You should start now while you still have some heating season left.
Re: What's the professional way to raise this vent?
Agreed. Deal with the underlying problem and not with the symptoms.
Re: Overshoot glycol target. 45% instead of 35%
The small reduction in heat transfer isn't of concern. Just leave it alone and correct the concentration with the proper inhibitors next year when you add the basement.
@GGross yes there are several PG manufacturers that will supply 100% (or very close) solution with inhibitors for whatever the ending solution might be. I have gotten it from Dow as well as Fremont inhibited for a final 33% solution (2 parts DI to 1 part PG mixed at my shop), and I know Cryo-Tek sells their AG fluid as 96% concentration. Also NoBurst -100 and Cryo-Tek -100 are both 55% as sold so a 50/50 is 27.5%.
GroundUp
Re: Energy Kinetics in a Part Time Home
Thank for your interest in our Ascent combi boiler. I hope to address your concerns here.
The Hydro-level hydrostat has 4 different operating modes which can be set to learn or just standard on off type use. So no need to worry about that. As far as the basements go, Hydro=level has designed their controls for shall we say a "normal" damp basement. While your conditions aren't necessarily ideal, The control has seen very harsh environments out in the field. While some of the programming features are unique to our system, an off the shelf control can be used in pinch to keep the heat and hot water running.
The wiring for nest thermostats to the hydro-level control would be no different than most heating systems out there. As long as the transformer is sized correctly for your zone valves and thermostats it will have no effect on the operation of the hydrostat.
Other than Wi-Fi thermostat access and alarm terminals on the burner primary, I am not aware of any "interface" controls that will work with the hydrostat.
Feel free to message me directly with any questions.
Robertw
Re: At last! Or... not quite!
@4GenPlumber Actually, both my boiler and Paul's were inspected so they needed to be correct.
Paul has never said someone shouldn't install the Hartford Loop, not once. People seem to interpret him questioning it, as him saying don't use it.
Perhaps on an older installation he's suggested the owner shouldn't be concerned about it being wrong, or missing but I'm pretty sure he wants all new boilers to be installed per the manual and all local codes.
What I think he is saying is it's not the safety net people think it is.
This may be important because for example fake security cameras have been found to be, to an extent, dangerous because they make people feel secure and safe not realizing they're fake. Just an example.
There's also the fact of correlation does not imply causation. I'm sure during the late 1800s early 1900s there were many changes made to heating boilers and heating systems besides the addition of the Hartford Loop as well as the people operating the systems. When you hear your neighbor blew up you'd probably start paying a lot closer attention to your boiler. Sometimes a little fear is a good thing.
ChrisJ
Re: What's the professional way to raise this vent?
teflon tape and teflon dope will make things easier to get apart later.
mattmia2
Re: Easy fix for Mod Con upgrade to 2 zone baseboard convector heating system that's struggling?
It's not the boiler size. With the BTU the boiler is capable of it should run away with that house even if the windows are open.
Some parameter isn't set right.
Re: Easy fix for Mod Con upgrade to 2 zone baseboard convector heating system that's struggling?
the heating input of 125,000 btu/ hr at 82%
should still give you around 100,000 btu/hr
Which should be plenty for a 2000 sq ft home
As @GGross mentioned, go to the control to “n” setting to see if it is at 180 for space heat mode
hot_rod
BIN temperature data for a city near you
Nate the house whisper. com is a energy nerd with tons of good data, books and info at his site. Check him out.
He offered this calculator, link at bottom, in a tweet. Basically showing compatibility for a HP in various areas.
4 examples for locations of frequent posters.
The temperature data itself is helpful for determining have you might vary SWT on a hydronic system with properly tuned ODR.
Also this tekmar essay 003 explains the various way to fine tune an ODR based on the type of heat emitters.
With a mod con replacing a conventional boiler on a system requiring 180 SWT at design day, you can determine how often, in hours per year, the boiler could possibly operate in condensing, high efficiency mode.
In Idronics 25 we show how reducing required SWT with building upgrades and then applying ODR based on the lower loads can leverage a condensing boiler, reducing fuel conception and possible comfort increase.
The example used in Idronics 25 used Syracuse BIN data and shows a load of 100,000 BTU reduced to 70,000 via various building energy upgrades. The energy upgrades potentials can be determined with blower door and IR scans, for example.
This reduced heat load, reduced the required design SWT from 180 to 147°. Fig 3.3
hot_rod
Re: At last! Or... not quite!
As a matter of fact, I replaced one in a church in October that had a catastrophic break in a wet return. The boiler had been decommissioned before I was brought in so I had no idea what had gone wrong. Replaced boiler, put on an auto feed with a counter. Left for about 14 hrs after firing and the boiler had filled 128 gallons. After opening the cement around the only wet return that went under ground, we found about a 2" section of 1 1/2 steel just missing. It had rotted away, probably at least a year prior. There was a sump pump pit about 2 feet away and about 16 inches lower in elevation that they told me later had been running nonstop the prior heating season. Without a counter, without a Hartford loop, and a stuck m&m 67, that would have become cherry red. I've also seen some substantial rot outs when the underground return isnt wrapped or at a minimum painted to protect it from the cement.
