Best Of
Re: Staple-Up PEX in an unconditioned cellar
Interesting structure .. being an old house guy I have run into a few "logs" … never that large !
IMO — More should be done to better insulate the crawl space. How big is it? .. height? What is on the floor?
Most of my projects have been in PA … Those stone walls are heat sinks (and they leak). I can see you have foamed to minimize the leaks — did you get a price to spray foam the walls ? You can drop a lot of $$ today on those foam panels and it's going to use cases ($$) of foam cans to seal around the logs. Foam the walls and you are almost done. Is there any other heat in the structure ?
Did you do a heat load on the building / room above? You may have 8" between the plates but not across the floor. Here is a picture of an 1870's stone church conversion I did … this is the main living room floor up in the timber frame rafters of the building. The floor was already there (it was no longer an active church) when I bought the structure so the cost to do anything other than adding retrofit plates was too expensive. You can see how many plates I used — they were the heavy plates and I used the 3/8 tubing on advice from "hot rod" here. I have used plates before but never the 3/8 tubing. Anyway — in this case I was trying to make sure I got as much out of the those plates as possible because I'm only making one temp water from the boiler and the rest of the structure is Warmboard. There is a 6"/8" traditional 3/4" board beach floor above. The structure already had some foam as you can see in the picture. I had the foam guys come back and skim the old foam and foam the crawlspace that had not been done. In my case the house also has ducted AC — so I put in a furnace as well and made provisions for some heat in the crawl but it's never been needed. Foam done correctly is amazing. All the walls and floors were filled with traditional fiberglass batts. Batts up tight against the plates — that is the way I have always done the plates. Years ago there was a theory to use the AL faced batts and place the VB up against the plates .. I used that on my first project. I don't think you can even buy that today and I don't think I would if available.
TAG
Re: Dual purpose thermostat?
This is one type that is commonly used. Find an adjustable model in the temperature range you want.
hot_rod
Re: Staple-Up PEX in an unconditioned cellar
some graphite paper of various thickness. But is it worth it?
hot_rod
Re: Staple-Up PEX in an unconditioned cellar
Unless the new fasteners are able to apply enough force to bend the metal into contacting the wood in more places.
I was thinking there must be some flexible heat-transfer material out there that could be put between the plates and the wood, like what is done with heat transfer compound and/or pads on circuit boards.
Re: can the wrong nozzle size cause damper to blow off on oil-fired boiler?
As you can see from these illustrations published by Delavan Nozzle, the different spray angles of nozzles will cause the electrode to be closer or further from the oil spray.
So when the nozzle angle was changed, the recommended electrode adjustments for a 60° may not be appropriate for the 80° spray
This is a Riello recommended electrode setting specification based on a 60° nozzle, along with the air setting for the turbulator setting. I believe that a 60° spray pattern nozzle works better in most Riello burner applications. Not ALL but in most, I would go with the boiler manufacturer’s recommendations in your case
EDIT:
By the way, I have never seen any other boiler or furnace manufacturer give such accurate settings on the burner air adjustments as I have seen with Riello. When you put all the settings exactly as recommended in the literature including Nozzle Specification, turbulator setting, air gate setting and fuel pressure, you are almost exactly where you should be for peak efficiency. Minor adjustments on any of the settings seem to always become less efficient on my combustion analyzer. This is a company that really knows what is the best way to set up their oil burners. If the technicians would only take the time to read the instruction manual, there would be a lot less call backs for improper adjustments.
YOU SHOULD ALWAYS VERIFY YOUR SETTINGS WITH A COMBUSTION TEST.
Re: expansion tank sizing
i got a feeling the radiators are not the problem. if you use steam radiators on hot water chances you you won't even need an expansion tank at all. do you have a coil in the unit ? could also be a bad feed valve seeping.
Re: Nuisance lockouts and flame failures
I danced with a similar problem on a similar power burner.
It might be the pilot gas regulator falling down when the main valve opens.
Or the pilot lifts off it's burner (and away from the flame sensor) when main valve opens.
Another case was the pilot gas was tapped after the main gas valve regulator and this confused the pilot regulator when the main valve opened, dropping the pressure to the pilot regulator. Took me years to finally notice that simple gas train problem…..but it was installed by an old pro, so you are not to question the "dead men"…..assume they did things right on the original install.
JUGHNE
Re: Nuisance lockouts and flame failures
Spark gap within spec? Electrode(s) in good shape, look real good at porcelain insulator for cracks. Ignition transformer provide a good sized spark?
Are you referring to pilot gas pressure or main gas pressure. You need to check both at test tees.
Does the flame light instantly, or is there a slight delay? In most cases with gas power burners (most burners I guess) the problems are normally with getting the pilot lit and established. Rarely does the flame drop out on main flame.
Webster burners used to be common here in NJ, however I have not touched one in years. We see more Powerflame burners, the smaller ones (about your burner size) are prone to inadequate air for proper light off and a stable flame during pilot. If all else fails and your pilot gas pressure is good, might want to open the air shutter slightly and see if things improve.
Re: Add air to water heat pump to radiant heating system
Plan for controll is heat pump has option to controll a electric backup, sending 240V. This will be feeding a relay controlling the heat pump. That is plan A. Plan B is if this does not work, all controls will go into a hbc eco-0600. It is design to controll staging of and bavkup switching between multiple heat pumps or boilers.
Re: Will I break this?
I've changed dozens of the 512 in my time. Use a backup wrench at the bottom, and a socket with bar on the top. Tap around the top edge as you increase forces. Never broke anything.
Oil and steam are not good partners. Use penetrating oil as a last measure, and clean up well before reinstalling the cap and new bellows.
