Best Of
Re: Taco zone valve smoking
I've only noticed the smoking this year ,maybe they have changed production methods.As for three valves on a transformer thats fine unless you have a house hold that wants all heat all the time then you'll be changing one head a year . When I attended a Honeywell sales pitch a few years ago the rep was able to show us all the math on this. But Honeywell 4 valves no problem .I change taco heads but install new Honeywell.
Lyle C
Re: Taco zone valve smoking
Well you may laugh but, I was told many years ago that it was due to the fact that Taco uses bee's wax in the head and any that may be on the outside will smoke off on the first cycle. i have seen it many times and have checked voltage and it is always with in tollerance.
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Re: Steam Boiler Pressure & Some Of My Adventures
It's not on a pigtail. It's an internal syphon. I ordered a replacement because I think it's just not working. I think I got to the bottom of it. I let everything run long enough so that all my radiators got hot. It looks like I may have a few vents that are no longer working properly, and I may have to increase the venting rate to balance things out a bit. I tested the pressuretrol while the boiler was running. If I bottom out the cut out pressure, it stopped the boiler from firing, and resumed if I increased it to 1.5psi again. So looks like that's working properly. I'm assuming that two things are happening.
1. My LWCO runs an intermittent test every 10 minutes. I'm guessing this is allowing for enough of a pressure drop that the pressuretrol is rarely kicking in.
2. The vents that I have that are not closing properly are probably allowing enough of a pressure drop so that the pressuretrol also is not kicking on. By the time I finished running everything, 3 of my radiator vents had not closed yet, but two definitely should have. The 3rd is also pretty old and I probably need to replace it anyway so that it vents more quickly.
So after doing all the replacements that I have, everything seems to be running pretty well. Fairly minimal water line movement, absolutely no water hammer at all, no leaking valves or radiators. Just a bit more work to do to balance the radiators.
Re: Steam Boiler Pressure & Some Of My Adventures
Ok, just so I am clear as to what you did. You removed the new Pressuretrol, the new 15 PSI gauge and the pigtail as one whole assembly and blew into it like the boiler pressure would go into the assembly and it all seemed to work OK, correct? The tapping into the boiler casting is also clear, not blocked. If all that is true, it certainly sounds like the 30 PSI gauge is giving you erroneous reading, I'd replace 30 PSI gauge.
109A_5
Re: Low water cutoff not working after cleaning pigtail
Just removing the nipple will leave some restricted access. But you may be able to bend the brush to compensate
Re: Gravity compression tank connection
Is the compression tank broken? Or is it that your plumber can't figure out how it works? If it's not broken, and I can't imagine what might break it, drain it out, connect it up to the system, bring the pressure to where it needs to be, and be happy. Takes half an hour at most, unless fittings or valves are stuck.
Re: Boiler plumbing questions
Like another backup boiler? If so pipe it off to the left of that drawing, parallel with the first. One, either or, or both boilers could run, depending on control logic.
An idea of what you are trying to accomplish would help determine best piping options, and control logic
My shop system had a wood fired boiler, a large solar thermal array and an LP backup boiler. The LP would only kick in it the tank dropped to a low temperature. I had a solar controller with 3 outputs that controlled the whole enchilada.
It had several zones of low temperature radiant, a few old cast radiators as high temperature, and the plate HX for DHW
hot_rod
Re: Vesta VRC repeated purge
Sounds like it could be the air proving switch for the inducer. Check tubing for blockage or condensate not draining etc
Or could be ignitor/flame sensor.
Not familiar with that boiler
Re: Can I use 1" black pipe for a 10' runout (couterflow) supplying 1 small radiator?
Not sure.
Also a chance all they had in my case was 2x2x1.25" tees.
ChrisJ
Re: Deviating from specification on head position.
Back in the 70s and 80s I had Carlin factory tech out to two different jobs we had problems with that both had interesting fixes.
The first one was an old lady with a 400N2R (the old lady was noise sensitive hence the slow speed burner) which was a slow speed Flame Retention burner that had been newly installed 3 years prior and ran fine with no issues.
After 3 years it was building carbon on the chamber floor. This burner had been gone through by me trying to fix the problem and everything was set up properly. It was installed with a 70 degree nozzle and we tried a 60 degree to narrow the fire with no improvement and still made carbon on the floor.
Carlin came out and tried a few things then we put an 80-degree nozzle in it and that was the fix. When I asked him why he shrugged his shoulders and said "I don't know, different oil maybe but the 80 degree nozzle fits the flame pattern of this burner in this boiler better"
So, I learned an important lesson. Mfg. specs are a starting point and don't work on every job.
If you bury your nose in the book and insist on the factory specs on all jobs you will fail once in a while.
The second job was a new boiler for the National Guard Base. A Weil McLain factory package with a Carlin 200CRD (I think). This one had poor combustion even when set to factory specs.
I don't remember what the fix on this one was, but I think it was a nozzle change as well.