Indirects and apartments

oil-2-4-6-gas

i have seen many apartment buildings with indirects triangle tube,amtrol,super store and a few others -this is not ideal --as you have to run the main heating boiler year-round //lots of apartments have a coil in the boiler -same problem you run the main year-round- i've seen modular boiler set-ups like the Hydrotherms --where you have a bank of boilers for dual purpose, in the winter and hot water only in the summer --it has a seperate water to water exchanger - the heating side is on outdoor reset -staging controller -you only run what you need --And if you loose 1 boiler its not a problem -isolate it and replace -- there are also a lot of places that use the coil in the boiler in the winter ,and have seperate water heaters -like the Raypaks,Teledyne's --of course this if you have gas - MOST of the apartments i work on are 100-250 family some large hotels and hospitals you can also go with Patterson Kelly's --

John_56

Indirects and apartments

I hope this isn't a stupid question. I have always heard that you don't need to increase the boiler capacity with an indirect water heater in a residential situation. I am working on a quote for a boiler replacement for a 56 unit apartment building. They also have two large gas fired water heaters and a pool boiler. I would like to recommend indirect water heaters and a heat exchanger for the pool, but I am not sure about how this effects my boiler load. Anyone have a suggestion? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

John

Marty

56 apartments can be a pretty big domestic load, priority isn't really an option either. Unless you were planing on staging a bunch of boilers anyway it would probably be better left as is.

chris_86

indirects are made for this application,...

as well as a double wall exchanger for the pool. Except depending upon the pool load, they can easaly be enourmous and I mean enourmous! This is why most pool heaters are independent Teradyne Larrs units, (rochester NH), they have a lot of experience with weather proof and long lasting pool heater design. Sounds like you need your manufacturers rep to do some design work for you, this is what they are paid to do! And indirects would be the prefered way to do it! Its small time homeowner mentality that would say priority overrides don't matter, it does!

Al Letellier_9

indirects

For a project that big, I would consider a separate boiler for the domestic use. You certainly will need to add extra loading for a job like this and the boiler(s) will be way too big in the summer months. size this one very carefully. If you don't have the experience or knowledge, use your supplier or better yet, any boiler manufacturer would love to sell the equipment for a job like this. Put them to work sizing the job. Sounds ideal for multiple boilers. I assume this is a hydronic job?? IF steam heat, I would definitely look at separate boilers.