What we did this week

Steve Ebels_3

We put in a pair of Prestige 175's and repiped the near boiler stuff to match the new boilers. The building used to be a school and was converted to a church many years ago. In fact while we were working there an old gent wandered down the basement to see what was going on. While jawing with my boys he related that he had played basketball in the building as a young lad in the early 1930's. He's now in his 90's.

The old cast iron beastie had sprung a leak and when we got the jacket off we discovered that there were actually several spots that were bad. It was probably installed in the mid to late 60's from the paperwork we found. The old building was a prime candidate for a ModCon retrofit. Lot's of rooms with excess radiation, lot's of old iron rads and 1 1/4" steel baseboard. An air handler that has a heat exchanger as big as a barn door serves the sanctuary (used to be the gym) so I had a good hunch that it would heat well at <140* water temps. The heat loss came out to a tad over 300K and the old boiler was firing at 785,000. The two Prestige 175's combined put out about 320-325K. I'm guessing about a 40-50% reduction in fuel bills for them. The church caretaker said they were on the "budget" plan for $850 a month year round and I think they'll probably be in the 400-500 range, tops, when the dust settles.

The old iron monster weighed 2,240# on the scrapyard scale and brought $116.60 for our efforts. Just about paid for the chiropractor bills for me. We cut the draw bolts and split each section lose to make it manageable going up the stairs. Drew and I started out carrying a center section between us, probably 180-200# and thought we got it up the narrow stairway quite well. On the way back down we met Matthew coming up the stairs carrying an end section (275# +) by himself and smiling while he did it. Kind of humbling to be around that kind of horsepower:) Handy to have a human fork lift though! The lad is scary with a 36" pipe wrench in his hands.

We located the new boilers in an adjacent room with an exterior wall for vent and intake piping and ran the system piping from the existing boiler room through the wall on the left in the pictures. Worked great even considering the wall was 14" + of ceramic block. The new boiler location was obviously the shower room when the building was a school. Some of the old fixtures were still on the walls and there was a cast iron ceiling rad hung near the exterior wall. No anti scald valves in those days. You just came out with a little more reddish hue than you went in with.

The Prestige boilers both ran pretty decent delivering 90%+ and fairly clean combustion. (<50ppm CO) right out of the box. I'm going to go back and check the gas pressure Monday because I have a hunch it's too low. Most of the old buildings around here are and the gas company gets absolutely sideways when I ask them for 7" in the building.

Look closely at the pump/manifold/piping in picture ****685 and the isolated shot ****689, then tell me what one of the complaints was about the way the building heated. That's your quiz for the day. The building committee people said I before they mentioned it. (HONK HONK, sound of Steve tooting his own horn!!)

Picture ***729 is classic and should be titled (How NOT to hang your boiler pipe)

Picture 693 is the company mascot and resident clown. (the one without the hat that is, the other is the human forklift)

****680 When they work hard, I have to feed 'em BIG TIME

Enjoy

Timco

That is some seriously good looking piping there. Super tight. What size LL header is that?

Tim

Steve Ebels_3

Thanks TImco

The LLH is a 2 1/2" Calleffi unit with the insulating jacket. It actually turned out tighter than it needed to really be but access to all the circs for service is just fine. That 2 1/2" supply is dead centered behind the 00 Taco's allowing a person to change the cartridge by accessing the four bolts on the shell with no problem.

ScottMP

Nice stuff Steve

1) With the way those flow checks were installed did ANY zone work independantly or did they all come on together ? Nice catch.

2) We've had trouble with the bottom connection on the larger Callefi leaking. Have you had that trouble ?

3) I think I'd rather buy a sail boat ride then feed em. Come to think of it I gave them drinks so you may still be ahead of me

Nice job and well layed out.

Scott

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singh

Nice work

Very nice indeed!

They should also reduce some of that electrical consumption by getting rid those B+G's.

I concur, Flo Checks on the vertical, was it pretty warm in there summer time?
How are they doing DHW?

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Steve Ebels_3

You got it Scott

Pretty much the whole building heated whenever either of the old 2" B&G's ran. The 100's didn't have quite enough snort to circulate everything. Those flo Checks were installed like that 40 years ago when the gas boiler replaced the old oil fired model installed. I don't know whether they just assumed that's the way it was supposed to be or the original company just told them to take a hike. (That company is very large and still in business BTW)

No problems with leaks on the Calleffi or anything else. Not a single drip in sight anyplace. I attribute that to our use of Loctite thread cord and a dab of pipe dope over the top of that. If you read the container for the cord you'll see that they recommend you use an enormous amount of it on each fitting. I think for 2" pipe you're supposed to use 16+ wraps. The fitting winds up looking like it choked on a hairball. Not necessary. We wind about 4-5 wraps on the fittings maybe 2-3 threads back from the end and give it a lick with the pipe dope. Seals any kind of thread. Guaranteed.

Steve Ebels_3

Singh

You're right on the electrical consumption. It should be about 30% less at a minimum. The DHW for the building now consists of a 20 year old direct vent State water heater located in the kitchen. They don't have a very high demand.

Weezbo

I like the way that you have that piped...

handy way to get it all super tidy *~/:)

must have been a head bumper to the owners,... first time they stepped back into the old boiler room