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Pigtail orientation

jeff_25
jeff_25 Member Posts: 110
in THE MAIN WALL
just remeber that they want to uncurl when heated
SwiK52

Comments

  • Bill_110
    Bill_110 Member Posts: 52
    Pigtail Orientation

    I recently got a new boiler (a Lennox model, which is identical to Dunkirk). Since the installers expertise was questionable, to put it politely, I got Dan's steam set to help me get things as squared away as is possible. In the We Got Steam text, on pigtails, he mentions that the "hole in the donut" shouldn't be facing you. I'm not a technical guy so I'm not quite sure what he was saying was the reason for this, but I thought it might have something to do with how it might effect the mercury switch level in the pressuretrol if the pigtail got heated up?

    Anyway, on my new boiler the pigtail is oriented the way he says it shouldn't be. I would probably just attribute it to the installers being knuckleheads, since they violated a lot of the mfg's don'ts on the critical near boiler piping. However the picture in the installation manual shows it being this way. In this arrangement the pipe from the boiler tapping goes to the site glass, but before the siteglass there is a tee into which the pigtail is threaded, with the pressuretrol sitting on top of it.

    Dan talks about twisting around the pigtail to the proper orientation, but with this setup it wouldn't be possible. So what I was hoping was that maybe sharing the pipe with the siteglass somehow helps limit the BTU's heating the pigtail(when the boiler is heating the pigtail doesn't seem to get hot as you approach the middle part). Or maybe this pressuretrol (a Honeywell PA 4004A)doesn't use mercury and so the orientation of the pigtail doesn't matter as much?Maybe this is unimportant but the discrepancy bugs me. Another thing that bugs me is that the pipe coming out of the tapping is so short that if I ever needed to clean the pigtail I don't think I would have the room to thread it off. I know on the old Weil-McLain boiler I had the pigtail was difficult but possible to take off, and when I did it was almost completely plugged with junk (of course nothing had been serviced on it for three decades, so maybe that wasn't surprising). If you can shed some light on this issue I would appreciate it.
  • bob_46
    bob_46 Member Posts: 813
    PIG

    BILL, I don't know about a PA4004A but a PA404A has a snap acting switch, no problem. bob

    There was an error rendering this rich post.

  • Brad White_191
    Brad White_191 Member Posts: 252
    No Hg. No Problem.

    They guys are right, no mercury to "tip" from uncurling, then it does not matter what orientation the pigtail has. For and aft is traditional but that loop looks so cool.

    Here in MA we have all kinds of orientations. Live and let live.
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