Venting literally and figuratively

LeadvilleGuy

Last year I met a contractor on here that spent a good time educating me about radiant heat.  His advice was at the time to was to stretch my current boiler till it met its maker...



Well it didn't. 



We have lived in our 3000sqft house for 10 years now. Our existing

natural gas heating system is a disaster and should have never passed

inspection. It is completely unsafe, unreliable and has been a headache

(literally)







Our radiant floor is fine. We have Gypcrete throughout the house with

porcelain tile. No other floor covering except for laminate floor on

the stairs.







Our boiler however is WAY over sized. It has no controls and no mixing

to provide proper temps to the floor. It is a copper heat exchanger

Teledyne Laars. We have a 43 gallon Amtrol  sidearm off the boiler.







Being that we are not mixing, we have to have to run the boiler at 130

degrees to keep the floor from getting to hot. This is the crux of the

problem.







We have horrible stack corrosion because the boiler really never gets

the moisture out(bad). The boiler has a 6" exhaust tapered to 4" Type B

vent(bad). It is side wall vented. The power vent was mounted mid

stream(very bad). We have replaced all of the vent twice now. I moved

the fan to as close as I could to the exterior. We have had instances

of CO alarms because of leaking vent pipe (very bad)







Well I want to do this right. We have been talking to numerous

contractors about replacing the boiler with a modulating condensing

boiler.



Besides the  one fellow I met here... The rest are incompetent. I know I live in a small town... But I live in a cold climate at altitude.  Heating systems have always been a  challenge.



I am not supposed to be the expert, but the code violations, safety hazards, functional issues, improper installs, lack of training, lack of support, critical issues that would void manufacturers warranties and just general lack of general technical expertise is at the very least frustrating, and at its worst DEADLY.



Thankfully this website exists.  I have not upgraded my system yet, but I now know what questions to ask.



Howard

Mark Eatherton

Your tale of woe is so familiar....

And unfortunately, occurs more often than we would like to see.



Fortunately, there is a cadre of well trained, qualified contractors, and many of them hang out here.



One that comes to mind is Richard, "The Heatmeister" Graves, in Dillon. He is not cheap (never has been, never will be) but if you want it done right ONCE, he's your go to man.



Richard is one of those rare contractors who puts a lot of fore thought into your system, and it shows in the quality of his work, but if you are looking to get by cheap, don't waste your (or his) time. He won't let you :-)



He also stands behind his work 100%, another rarity in this industry.



Sorry you got stung the first time around.



ME

LeadvilleGuy

The heatmeister

Richard was at the house two days ago... with a Viessmann rep.  We are awaiting his quote.



I am confident that I found the right guy.



I reread my first post.  Richard came out last winter and looked at my "system"  He pointed out all of its flaws and let me know what needed to be done.  He did recommend that I limp along with what I have to get the most life out of it.



It went a year...  Richard was right...



It has not been just one contractor that has misdiagnosed, misfixed, and screwed up things..  There have been 5 who have worked on it and a 6th gave me an estimate that made critical mistakes and oversights.

Mark Eatherton

If you hire him...

you will have ZERO regrets. I guarantee it.



ME