condensate tubing freezing in old Blighty

Leo_G

<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/27/condensing-boilers-freeze-uk">http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/27/condensing-boilers-freeze-uk</a>



Thought this was interesting. Always interested how things are done in other areas of the world.

Mark Eatherton

Reminds me of a story my father use to tell...

A plumber friend of his went to jolly old England. Being a plumber, e noticed things that mist people wouldn't, like exposed water lines on the outside of older homes. When he commented on them, the person giving them the tours said "It makes access easier to repair them if they freeze and break..."



Here in the good ol' U S of A, it is illegal to discharge the condensate from a condensing appliance outside on the ground, for exactly the reason that they are having issues.



Maybe there would be an advantage to them adopting our codes after all... :-)



Now we know why we haven't heard from our British friend, CroyDonCorgy



ME

Jamie Hall

Right...

I imagine CroyDonCorgy is having his work cut out for him...



When my daughter lived in Edinburgh (she's back on this side of the pond now) I was continually amazed at the water and sewer (and everything else, for that matter) lines on the outsides of buildings -- although one can see why; it's mighty hard to run a pipe through a solid stone building.  And on top of that the dubious heating in so many buildings (two of the flats she lived in depended -- entirely -- on gas fires in the old fireplaces for heat) which lets things like cisterns and so on freeze up...

Jean-David Beyer

Is this code everywhere?

"Here in the good ol' U S of A, it is illegal to discharge the condensate from a condensing appliance outside on the ground,"



Lots of air conditioners (window type) seem to do that. Mine would if it produced condensate faster than the thing was designed for. It has a fan to cool the condensor coil that dips down to where the condensate goes. So if there is any condensate, it is thrown on the condenser and it boils away. But many units have a hose that just dribbles onto the ground. Are they all illegal?



My former contractor, who installed my mod|con boiler, has the condensate discharge outside onto the ground. The boiler is in a garage with no drains anywhere near it.  There is about 1/2 inch clear plastic tube that goes from the condensate pump to just before it goes outside. It goes through a fitting that converts it to about 1 1/2 inch PVC that goes through the wall and to a 90 degree elbow facing down.  I said why not discharge it into the hole where my former oil tank was? They said they could not get a permit to do that. One option was to run the condensate into a 5 gallon bucket filled with rocks and holes in the bucket. The other was to let it just drip on the ground. Some inspectors, they said, accepted the bucket, and some did not. They said they would just dump it on the ground and then change it to whatever the inspector required. The inspector did not even look at that, so it passed.



Now since I have a condensate pump (I do not know how much head it has, possibly 20 feet if it is a Little Giant), I thought to pump it into the drain of the house, probably neutralizing it first. Trouble is that it would have to be raised up to the ground floor ceiling, run over two rooms, and down to somewhere near where the sink goes. That would involve ripping out a lot of ceiling and one wall (genuine plaster) that they did not want to do. I can see why.



So is my installation against code? Or could the code accept this here? Or is the inspector careless? It seems to dump about 2 gallons a day when the water does not freeze. When it is really cold, it freezes, so I cannot tell how much condensate is produced. I stuck a slip of pH paper in it and it is about pH 3.

Jean-David Beyer

You think that's bad?

My parents had an apartment in Menton France (Riviera) that is so old no one knows how old it is. The street was put in by the Romans, but the apartment is newer than that. All the gas, water, and drain pipes are on the outside of the buildings because they are stone and something like Stucco or concrete; they are about 2 feet thick, perhaps a little more. The pipes were all an afterthought, added after the buildings were already there, perhaps for centuries.



On the Plus side, the temperature rarely goes below 40F, so freezing is unlikely.

On the Minus side, the pipes, inclucing the water pipes, are made of lead.

Mark Eatherton

I should have clarified better...

Here in Colorado, it is illegal to dump condensate from heating appliances on the ground.



Depending upon which code you are operating under, it may or may not be acceptable. From a common sense stand point (What's that?) you have obviously experienced why it is that you shouldn't discharge the condensate on the ground.



It is also a bad idea to drill a hole in the slab and let it drip below the slab. It can cause major structural damage and require $ignificant dollar$ for repair$.



The fact that the local AHJ's inspector didn't call it out does not really surprise me. There are a lot of incompetent inspectors in the field. To their credit, there are some good qualified inspectors at work in the field, but unfortunately, they are rare, and far between.



Condensate, by its nature is relatively pure water. If it were me, I would consider purchasing a cheapo dry element humidifier, and pump the condensate into it and let it evaporate it back into the air. You won't get much condensate from a residential setting, and I would think that with the evaporative humidifiers would have a good chance of re-introducing the moisture back into the dry winter air..



I wouldn't keep dumping it on to the ground tho. Especially if it is any where near the foundation of your building. I suppose a person could build a smallish leaching field to get rid of the water.



On a side note, sewage treatment authorities HATE condensate because it is not metered, and they can't figure out how much it adds to their treatment process. In the grand scheme of things, the infiltration around their poorly fitting man holes probably contributes more to their process than does heating appliance condensation, but I guarantee you that they are trying to figure out a way to tax us on it.



Sorry for the cornfusion.



ME

Mike Kusiak_2

Humidifying with condensate?

Don't think it would be a good idea to directly evaporate the condensate and use it for humidifying the house. The acidic components are volatile, which would also evaporate and contaminate the indoor air. Might not be a problem if you neutralized the condensate first, since the acidic components would react with the calcium carbonate to form nonvolatile salts which would not evaporate.

Mark Eatherton

Further clarification..

I guess I should have said what I saw in my minds eye. I wasn't considering using it for humidification within a living space, but rather pulling cold air in from outside and discharging humid air back outside.



I don't think I'd consider putting it back into the house even with neutralization due to other contaminants (aldehydes, mercaptans and such). I originally thought about boiling it off, but that would be way too energy intensive. In my minds eye, I was actually thinking about an outdoor modcon installation for snowmelt, and what a person should do with the condensate produced.



Good point tho. Sometimes I find myself saying things that can be taken out of context by people that could cause problems.



Thanks for the prompting Mike.



ME