Best Of
Re: Oil guy couldn't fill my tank today
Check the price of propane before you decide. If it was me from what i know about propane prices I would stick with oil.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Its easy to come on this site and have everyone including me tell you how to spend your money.
This is my take.
Propane is going to cost $$. You would still have to remove the oil and the tanks. You can't just abandon them.
Put 1 new tank in. Make it a 330 gallon thank if they can get it down there or a 275. Your previous post said you only get the tanks filled 3-4 times a year. You can easily get by with 1 tank. Your probably getting oil every 2 months now. Once a month is a non issue.
That gets you back running.
See how that goes and then you can save up for a furnace and another tank which you may never need to add. You can have them give you an estimate for another tank and a furnace so you know what your looking at.
I understand big, unexpected expenses
Re: Help with recommendation of Gorton steam cast iron radiator vents sizes?
"The lost art" is mainly intended for contractors, while "we got steam heat!" Is meant for homeowners. However, "the lost art" is well and clearly written so it will probably be all you need.
bburd
Re: Help with cast iron radiator decision
I am very grateful for all of your advice and knowledge. I’m thankful to have this group. Bburd that’s exactly the answer I’m looking for. Thank you so much!
zman11
Re: Help with recommendation of Gorton steam cast iron radiator vents sizes?
"we got steam" is the primer read,
neilc
Re: Help with EDR of this radiator
7 square feet per section, and 3 sections, total 21 square feet.
Re: Help with cast iron radiator decision
Let me give it a shot.
I think I can understand why you might want to get rid of that radiator in front of the window. I would. Now. What to put into its place? I presume this is hot water heat? If so, flow is not likely to be your problem, although you may have to get somewhat creative with pipe routing. This is especially true if the radiator you have there now heats the room adequately.
However, as @EdTheHeaterMan said, what could be a problem is the emitter itself. The baseboard. You really want to use cast iron baseboards if you can get them, as they will behave in much the same way as your radiator in terms of how fast they heat up and cool off. Then the second aspect is to match as closely as you can the output of the new baseboard to that of the existing radiator.
Re: Riello 40 F5 issue
Former Riello Burner Area Manager here.
Draft, draft and draft! I cannot count how many jobs I went on that DRAFT was the issue. Guys first line of defense was always "that's the draft regulator that came with the boiler". That's fine…but if you read the instructions, it says something like it's good for 25 ft high chimney. So, if your chimney is 60 ft high - then you need to go up (2) sizes on the regulator - so that 6" regulator needs to be an 8" draft regulator. I went on a RIELLO commercial burner call 20 years ago in a Weil McLain 94 Series, (2) boilers and the other boiler had an old Kewanee burner in it lol. PLUS, (2) commercial AO Smith water heaters, all (4) appliances going into approximately 3x8 ductwork breaching - NO DRAFT Regulators. Chimney was approximately 125 ft high. I opened the flue cleanout and almost got sucked up the chimney ;-D. The contactor ended up putting (2) 20" barometric dampers in that breaching ductwork to get the draft right. See, big or small boilers/burners work off the same principle!
Now FYI that 530 control is not digital - it's completely analog with a bi-metal heater for the reset. The more times you reset the control - the shorter the TFI is. So if you hit the reset button 5 times in a row - you'll be down to about 1-2 second TFI. Nothing wrong with that control - just the way its designed.
Next thing I would check is vacuum on the pump. Everyone always makes in fun of that little pump, but I've seen those pumps do the unthinkable, and I've seen them do nothing out of a 5-gallon bucket. At this point if you're grasping at straws, put a vacuum gauge on the pump. Check the pressure while you're there, if someone turned down the pump pressure - now you're probably grossly over-aired. Just reviewing basic burner set up is key on problem jobs like this. I went out to help a local contractor two weeks ago that had a problem gas burner with nuisance lockouts for 2 years straight. Carlin EZ Gas burner. The contractor had replaced (3) 60200 FR controls and (1) ignitor over the two-year period. I simply found that the burner was NEVER set up with a combustion analyzer. It was running at 100% excess air, waaay too much draft and the wrong gas orifice size. Once we dialed everything in - burner is now purring like a kitten ;-)
So, whether its oil, gas or dual fuel - big or small - same principles apply.
jmhajoca
Re: [urgent] Is there a way to limit maximum firing rate for Lochinvar Knight boiler?
From the manual, the ramp delay allows you to limit the 6th final ramp output.
So maybe start with 5 minutes on each step, put the last one to 50% or whatever you want to limit the max firing rate to.step 1 10%, step 2 20, step 3 30, step 4 40, step 5 50% and whatever you need on step 6, maybe 60%
hot_rod
Re: Help with recommendation of Gorton steam cast iron radiator vents sizes?
Remember that in one pipe steam systems, the size of the vent on a radiator really controls how much heat the radiator will produce, within a remarkably broad range.
Therefore… I would start by determining whether there are some spaces which are warmer than you would like, or some that are cooler. If you find that in general the balance isn't too bad, simply replace the existing vent with a Gorton of roughly the same size. @gerry gill produced a remarkably useful document to help with that — it compares the venting capacity of quite a range of vents.
( @gerry gill I hope you don't mind my uploading my copy here!)
Check the vent you have on a radiator to find its capacity, then select the nearest Gorton.
Now. Having done that, go back and think about what rooms are too warm — if any. On those, try dropping the vent one size. But do this only one room at a time, and let at least a day go by, as any change in one vent will affect all the others in the house!
Re: Radiant Heat. Should I raise the temp?
Water will take the path of least resistance. For the boiler pump and loop, that path is across those tees back to the boiler. The pressure drop thru the 3 way is much higher. I predict some, maybe most of the boiler flow crosses those tees and makes a "primary loop".
But the bigger issue with that tight H connection is the pumps are not completely isolated from one another in a hydraulic sense. So a % of the boiler pump is probably going to the zones with the zone pump.
This just isn't the correct way to pipe it no matter how many ways you look at it :)
As mentioned you could get two birds with one stone here. Get rid of the unnecessary mix valve and get the piping corrected to a workable P/S
Hack saw the H assemble out move the spiro back and make one of the two loops I have shown above.
Is that the correct pump on the boiler loop? What size Nobel? the manual will tell what the correct pump options are.
A stick of copper tube, a handful of press fittings and this is a days job or less.
hot_rod