Best Of

Thank you for your post, @wjcandee , and for everyone's comments.

The first point I'll make is if you have any concerns that you feel are not being addressed to your satisfaction, you should contact us directly at (908) 735-2066 and ask to involve your territory manager. This will clear up many of the questions you posed and allow for a prompt resolution. We should have our territory manager and your dealer talking directly about your concerns.

You high water volume system with cast iron radiators has low mass/high mass piping installed (primary/secondary piping), which is excellent.

Regarding efficiency, give the system a chance to work while properly installed. It sounds like you've ironed out some issues so you should be in good shape after our territory manager reviews your job with the dealer.

Here is some background on energy savings, which may or may not be applicable to your situation (I'll use an oilheat example). When we analyze savings, we usually look for two years of prior history and at least one year afterwards. It's difficult to gauge when oil tanks are sometimes completely filled and sometimes not. Over the course of a year and with the delivery company intentionally filling the tank at the beginning and the end of the year will allow much more accurate estimates. It's also important to realize that we need a good "starting fill" to estimate fuel consumption properly. For example, if the tank is completely filled on June 1, the boiler is installed September 1, and the tank is then completely filled again November 1, there are 3 summer months of usage under the prior boiler, so we can't start estimating until deliveries are made sometime (preferably a year) after then November 1 fill. We then normalize the savings using heating degree day data from a local weather station.

Analyzing a mix of heating and hot water fuel use over a short period of time even with degree day data is not a preferred way to gauge performance. You have an EK2, so you will have a large heating load so this may be even more pronounced.

The primary/secondary (low mass/high mass) zone valve opening and closing is protecting the boiler from condensing. The burner will run without shutting off during these cycles. This does not reduce the overall boiler efficiency, but improves comfort and protects the boiler. Here's why: The circulator on the primary loop (which goes out to the radiators) continues to run with high enough flow that the radiators will typically heat much more evenly. Because the primary loop circulator continues to run, the heat distribution is much more even (as compared to a typical boiler where the heating circulator would turn off when the boiler temperature dropped too much from cold returns; this would "pulse" heat out and causes near radiators to heat rooms more than more distant radiators).

There is usually a ball valve on the return of the injection zone, and throttling this somewhat will reduce the number of zone valve cycles. This is a specific setting for a given primary/secondary loop, and once it's set it does not need to be moved again. Nothing hurts the efficiency or the boiler if this is not done, but if it is your preference, it could be adjusted to reduce injection zone valve cycles. Throttling too much could cause the burner to turn off from a high boiler temperature from too much bypassing water earlier than it would with less throttling.

Best,

Roger