Where is all the AIR coming from :(

Darin Cook_2

If you have to bleed this again go and open the

ScottMP

We have a Great Customer

WHo we have done ALOT of heating work for and have more to do.

We have a Viessmann boiler in the basement with a cast iron radiators on the second floor. We went to the third floor and made a manifold that handles the third floor copper fin baseboard and then down feeds to the second floor for cast iron radiators. The whole thing is constant circ ulation with the second floor getting TRV's.

We installed a Buderus mixing station in a closet on the third floor that down feeds to the master bath radiant system.

We get air bound at Least every month ????????

We have installed a high preasure relief valve and raised the preasure in the boiler to 35lbs. The boiler is in the basement with roughly thirty feet to the mxing station in hieght. The third floor panel for the rads and copper fin has no problem.

The rug installers hit our climate panel about six times during the original install but we fixed them.

No water showing on the ceiling for a leak.

Where the hell is the leak coming from ????

HELP OBI WAN KANOBI.

Scott

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Weezbo

i bought a cheap didgital camera*~/:)

the pic i have of the budrus boiler and pump block isnt ready for comment buh i will get one and send it to you. i think it needs air elimination on the supply and return headers at start up.

Brad White_9

Scott,

I assume you have all of the good things in life on this system such as a Spirovent, pumping away (really dumb thing to ask you of all people). Stipulated for record.

How much air do you get out when you vent the air pockets? Massive quantities or just a squirrel-ah, burp?

Does the radiant manifold have it's own circulator? Some have really high heads (My Stadler BIM certainly does, not familiar with the Buderus models). With the 3/8" tubing in my Climate Panels, it uses a Grundfoss 26-99 and can pull a negative on the suction side...)

If this is the case, a circulator on high, my thinking is that the radiant circulator, especially at a high point, may be drawing air into the suction side at a minor level but enough to accumulate over, what, say a month?

My $0.02,

Brad

ScottMP

Yes Brad

Your correct, we have all the right stuff

I will post pictures of the job so you can see the set-ups. The air is small/large squirrel like burps every three or four weeks during the season. This happened last year , which was the first season.

Thanks for the input and I appreciate your thoughts.

Take a look at the pictures when I put them up.

Scott

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Brad White_24

Scott- Any updates?

Curious.

Brad

Dave_4

hi scott i hope you post pictures of that install i love your work.

anyway as far as air i had the same problem every 2 weeks my system had air i took my expansion tank off took apart my fill cleaned the strainer prv was not popping.

turned out i caught the leak one day it was from a ball valve just under the handle there's a bolt i tighten it and it stopped but it was such a small leak that when i came down stairs the drip was dry so i never saw it. so feel all the ball valves. it worked for me and now i have no air.

good luck
Jason

[Deleted User]

The key grasshopper...

is in the kitchen...under the sink.

Inject about an ounce of liquid dish detergent into the system and watch your bubbles go away.

ME

Brad White_24

Oh Sensei,

Please explain as I bow before the door to your dojo....

Is this to say, "Calgon, take me away"?

[Deleted User]

Old timey trick...

Soap is a surfactant. It turns big bubbles into smaller bubble which are easily transported in solution back down to the air eliminator in the basement.

This trick was taught to me back in the olden Golden days of solar.

Enjoy your bath:-)

ME

ScottMP

Your Soaking in It

Mark, I remember you speaking about this.

I have two concerns, One is that this is a big system. How much do I put in.

Two, Where is the air coming FROM.

Here are photos of the job. The Buderus station and the panel that we built are both at the same hieght in the attic. No air problems at the panel.

Could it be that the radiant smaller tube has more of a problem with the air than the larger fin tube, that is on the attic level ?

I would hate to put an auto air vent at the attic hieght !

Scott

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Brad White_9

Oh Madge...

I was trying to remember that line, Scott!

What I would look for is a reading on the suction pressure of your highest circulator that serves a high head load (manifold). You have drain cocks, unions, opportunities that can be water tight but not quite air tight.

Absent other factors, I am stumped as to what else it might be. If a system is under pressure higher than the ambient, leakage is outward. Therefore, for leakage IN, it has to be an obviously lower pressure. And that would be the suction side of the circulator especially at a higher static elevation. (The pressure at which, I duly note, you said you increased.) I cannot think of another place where that might occur.

I would install a compound gauge on that suction side at least to eliminate it as a variable.

As you said, it runs for a while and accumulates over a month's time, so you are dealing at the molecular level.

ME's soap solution makes sense to me to scavenge loose air, but only if the source is found and eliminated. But it leaves your piping "sparkling clean"!

BTW- Panel shot looks great! Buderus Blue? Too cool.

My $0.02,
Brad

ScottMP

Thanks Brad

We have pumped the radiant up to 100lbs and left it for a few hours with no leaks ( and as you said leakage would be outward ).

We are going to pump up the mixing station and check that. We did find the unions on the sattio were loose and tightened them a year ago. I will start to zero in on the suctions side, it makes sense.

Thanks for the two cents

Scott

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bigugh_4

Just thinking out loud

I'd hate to say it but if there was a scratch under one of those viega connections just right for the negitive pressure of a fast moving fluid to suck on that'd be very hard to find. And it could be that the leak would be tight in the positive pressure mode. Like I said thinkng out loud!

[Deleted User]

Dear Soapy...

Scobble, I'm thinking 1 OZ per 50 gallons of fluid. The air may be coming from within. Trapped air in bottom tapped radiators, so on and so forth.

What the hey, it can't hurt, and as Paul Pollets can atest, "It works!"

ME

archibald tuttle

cowrong me if I'm wrecked...

...but why would you be hesitant to install air elimination high in the system where the air might tend to collect? That was always my seat of the pants rule although the cheap auto-vents create a whole nother leak hazard, but how about reliable units such as the spirovent. If you placed it just down stream of the attic pump on the loop that was locking, if the air was entering on the suction side of the pump, that should be strategic location.

Brad, if you suspect suction at pump inlet contributing to tiny inmigration of air, could that be remedied with a higher volume delivery by the system pump since it sounds like the system is already running near max operating pressure?? As long as it can keep up with all the loop pumps wouldn't that mitigate even a leg with high head?

I've always believed in the more pressure the merrier. I have had pretty reliable circulation on systems that I can run in the 35 to 45 lb. range that used to give me all kinds of headaches at theoretically sufficient pressures of 12-20lbs.

Brian

EBEBRATT-Ed

Maybe a stupid question but we had a similar job. You said you raised the boiler pressure to 35 psi which should be good for about 80'. How about lowering it to 20 which should handle 30' and did you also raise the expansion tank air pressure to 35?

Won't raising the pressure reduce the expansion tank capacity? maybe your running out of expansion-it can't push back when water cools -looks like air.

ED

Brad White_26

Hey, Brian!

My thinking on the suction side (operative verb "suck") the air may be drawn in from the manifold side not the primary. It would be a function of high head/low flow. Just going by the amount of air I can suck into my radiant manifold by opening the vent with the Grundfos 26-99 operating versus it being off. I do imagine the primary is keeping up with the loop output, yes. But the draw is still from the PEX side of life I am surmising.

Your point about a high-point Spirovent occured to me also. Had not thought about it being on the discharge side, for air releases better at lower pressures. But indeed some local scrubbing may be in order.

See you and Laurie at RI Mardi Gras, my friend. Et toi!

Weezbo

Howdy Scott *~/:)

there is never any problem with pushing air thru an air spearator so it isnt at the header unless maybe it is in a bonnet on a purge valve.long time ago and far away i had one of those white cream colour gaskets that come with the header not seating properly in that i hadnt twisted it down quite snug and up stairs was some buderus pannel rads then up stairs from them was base board and a distant indirect because it was closer to the point of useage dont ask i weirdly

there was quite a bit of wirsbo running to three seperate stations,it took some fricking with to determine it was that gasket...until then i had always thought snug was good enough as none had ever been a hassle in the past....funny thing about it was the air was :"moving" it traveled and collected in various locations kinda elusive as heck. i went and got another gasket never another problem...might be something real simple. had a ball valve that wasnt tristed together and was seeping out of the body of the valve that was not easy to find by the way,had a pin hole leak in some pipe letting out such a clean fine jet it wasnt noticeable on visual inspection. a real fine tool is a ultra sound machine by Go Pro. that thing has ears like a Dog! you can cut weeks off of finding and repairing leaks in a large commercial building. well ,i thank you for your efforts because all of us get the 'what the heck is This!?' and if we dont say anything then maybe the next guy wastes countless hours trying to figure out the exact same Stuff *~/:) in my mind you arent picking anything up from the boiler the block is pummping into the bleederi, got to think it is a suction side leak. reason i use supply and return at remote stations is, i can close off my suction side or remove it completely. if a leak develops and or you shut down a pump, you can micro manage the purge

Darin Cook_2

Scott

Me and Markie had this situation not too long ago with the Buderus pump station. The thing to do to fix this is real easy you have to

hr

A high point vent

would be my first choice. I've gone as far as soldering in a 1/4 tube and running it to a lower and safer location to burp the system.

Spirovents allow you to screw on a 1/2 pex to fip adapter and run the line to a drain or suitable location.

hot rod

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Mark Hunt

Hey Scott


Darin is having computer trouble so he couldn't finish the reply.

I think I know which job he is talking about though, almost the exact same problem.

The fix, IIRC, was so simple it was almost embarrassing.

All we had to do was



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Brad White_26

You have a cruel streak, Mark...

Funny, but cruel

Mark Hunt

I would respond to you Brad


but I am having computer problems and cannot access the inter-net right now.

I swear that as soon as I can, I will post the solution to Scott's problem.

Mark H

P.S. GOOD CATCH BRAD!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!


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Darin Cook_2

Good Answer Mark

i am glad that you cauught how to fix the

Darin Cook_2

The reason the air

gets caught there is

Darin Cook_2

scott

Sometimes the Buderus pump station acts up because

Darin Cook_2

if you use soap

DO NOT USE

Darin Cook_2

if you use soap

DO NOT USE

Darin Cook_2

The thing with the

Buderus pump station is the

Darin Cook_2

You know when we went to the

IBR school they told us

Royboy

appears to be some extraneous air

mysteriously getting into these posts ...

Phillip Biston

I have been reading this post trying to learn something about this, and I think you guys are all........;)

Weezbo

Maybe i found the

it is a small crack in the bronze casting. pinner leak along the cast above the H side temp indicator above the pump.

J.C.A._3

Darin,

You AND Mark are both cruel Mother Fornic......
Like the supervisor in 48 Hrs said, that crap went out the day after Marconi invented the radio!

Give it up brother! We need answers! Chris

(Iknow, you gotta be cruel to be kind)

ScottMP

So

apparantly Mark has decided to share the scotch !!

Welcome to the dark side Darin, it did'nt take long for Hunt to drag you down.

You were such a promising young lad too.

I guess we now know that all the air is coming from a small town in upstate New York.

Scott

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Darin Cook_2

Okay Okay

Now seriously. Did you turn the feed valve off to see if you actually lost pressure in the system? You are at the high point of the system and a natural air gatherer. Maybe a vertical spirovent would be the answer here. Because it is constant circulation it is always gathering bits and pieces of air. Because it takes such a long time to get airbound it does sound like some sort of oxygen diffusion is going on. I know it sounds crazy but the pex you used did have a O2 barrier right? Did you double check all the packing nuts and such for little weeping leaks? All right enough heating talk. I am already being punished for busting your chops. I have to go install a sewage ejector this morning.

P.S. It wasn't scotch it was a box of delicious red wine!