Best Of

Re: Old oil furnace nozzle compatibility

Wasn't there at one time an "Aero" burner made in Canada and maybe some were in the states as well?. I remember some called it a Canadian Beckett.

EBEBRATT-Ed

1

Re: When to NOT use sharkbite? A question

LRCC...Bro...how did I get it done??? The A-1 Mini torch tip...Ive used tiny Butane model torches to keep flame very focused. Till this day, I've never used a Sharkbite for a repair...I've prefabbed pieces, used a brass compression fitting at times...never used the "bread trick" either. Have I blackened a few floor joists? Sure, I always get it done, Professionally and safe. Never used a Fernco Clamp either. I've never lit a house on fire either..never had an insurance claim through my businesses..

Priorities to me:

Do the highest qaulity, Professional repair/installation possible. No half assing it or DIYer, Rube Goldberg gimmicks. Anyone can do mickey.mouse repairs...
Making a profit.

Not the wisest businesses model, but it ain't about $$$ to me...I do.alright..and I get tremendous gratification out of holding to these extremely high standards I set for myself. Mad Dog

Mad Dog_2

3

Re: A2W efficiency and calculating BTUh per SqFt....

It looks like you did a good job with insulating your house and your heat pump is running well.

How are you measuring electricity usage?

Other manufacturers will provide more information about performance at different temperatures. The key factor is the temperature delta between outside and water temperature. This is a chart I made using Chiltrix performance data. The x-axis is temperature delta and the y-axis is COP.

These are all at 100% output. Generally COP improves as output is reduced, modulating heat pumps tend to have higher COP at their minimum output than their maximum output.

So there's a triple whammy on COP as temperature declines:

Lower temperature means higher temperature delta.
If you're using outdoor reset, lower temperature means you need hotter water to meet the heating load, which means even higher delta.
Lower temperature means higher heating load, which means that the heat pump runs at a higher output, which also means lower COP.

So in your calculations you have to have someway of accounting for the variation in COP with temperature to have any accuracy in measuring output. My heat pump will tell me flow and temperature rise on the console, from which I can calculate instantaneous BTU/hr.

Finally, a semantic note: BTU and Watt are not measuring the same thing. BTU is a unit of energy, Watt is a unit of work, which is energy divided by time. Watts are commonly multiplied by time to get energy, which is where kWh come from. BTU's are frequently divided by time to get work, which is where BTU/hr come from.

So 1W= 3.412 BTU/hr and 1 Wh=3.412 BTU. There really isn't a unit called a BTUh.

DCContrarian

1

Re: Wrestit wrench

@Mad Dog_2

I couldn't do this now but when I was young and stupid we were installing a large gas burner in a big chain grocery store.

We had to shut down the meter and have this all preplanned for night work.

When we went to tie in at the meter we couldn't un thread a 3" coupling with 3 footers. The pipe unthreaded at the next joint down the line. Fine , we will take the whole thing down and put it in the vise.

Still couldn't unthread it. We needed to get it apart and save the fitting cause it was after hours etc and didn't have any more fittings.

We ended up with it in the vise a 3' wrench with a 2 1/2" 21' cheater on it and the other guy holding the vise down with another pipe as a lever.

I am glad no one saw us we must have looked like total idiots

EBEBRATT-Ed

4

Re: Simple effective addition of AC to dome home?

Illustration of what I’d like to do.

Closet is currently 23” deep stud to stud. It could be increased to 24” or possible more if needed.
I’d like to keep the closet as functional as possible.

Supply could run under the floor but not sure where to place the vent then.

If this idea could work, should I be looking at concealed low static ducted units or a smaller standard ducted unit? Any idea on size?

bryantroll

1

Simple effective addition of AC to dome home?

I’m looking to add a touch of AC to my Colorado dome home, and I’d like to hide the unit and ducting inside my loft bedroom closet, pictured below. Hoping for some ideas on equipment selection and ducting design.

Some specs:
House is in climate zone 5. House is a 2400 square foot (above ground) concrete dome with R21 continuous spray foam and 1.5ACH. No existing ducting, no attic, no crawl space, finished basement. I am adding an ERV system for ventilation. I had a manual J done for heating but don’t think we did it for cooling. Calculated 40k BTU heating needed above ground.

Max indoor temp last summer was 74.5 degrees in the loft and 72.5 degrees on the main floor without AC, with one person living there. Large stairwell to the 64 degree basement was open last year, will be closed in this year, not sure if that will have an impact.
I’d like the option to drop the indoor temp ~6 degrees to handle the highest temps of the year, but also keep a simple system.
Hoping to add a heat pump in the loft closet to pull return air from the top of the dome and push cool air back out into the open space to circulate. I’d also like to push some cool air into the loft bedroom.

This does ignore the two main floor bedrooms but I don’t know if it’s necessary to address those or not.

Looking for suggestions and ideas I’d this seems like a good idea and how you’d go about pulling it off.