Lochinvar

Brad White

I was fortunate to be invited to Lochinvar in Tennessee, today and tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing their full line and new products/systems, learning new things and reinforcing the familiar.



Most of all, I get to again see my friend Paul Rohrs and his solar presentation. If not for this site, how else might we have met? And that goes for the rest of you!



I will report back, but will not be back until late Friday night.

Mark Eatherton

An eye opening experience...

I think they refer to it as an "Eye's On " tour.



You WILL be amazed. They feed raw materials into one end of the building and pump boilers out the other end.



Say hey to our good friend Paul.



ME

MikeyB

Tour

Enjoy it Brad, looking forward to hearing about it

hot_rod

lunch at a haunted restaurant

nearby?

ScottMP

Have a good time Brad

Great company and a Great Product.

Not sure about the haunted restaurant but stay away from the fried pickles ...

Say Hi To Paul !!

Paul Rohrs_14

A balmy 75-degrees today

I truly wish all of you could be here for the Lochinvar experience.  We have some terrific presentations and new products to show. 

Certainly, we are looking forward to Brad's arrival and with dinner tonight and a hockey game between Nashville and Boston....will be a great night for sure.

Scott, how is your supply of Fried Pickles holding out?  I know it must have been problematic getting 400 lbs of fried pickles thru security.

Just teasing and wish you could be here as well.

Best,

Paul

meplumber

Go Bruins.

I am envious Brad.  Have a good trip.

Brad White

Lochinvar Recap

Excellent trip and company- there it is in as few words as I can muster.



The first impression I get on Lochinvar's engineering is that they listen to their customer base, both end-users, specifying engineers and contractors. Their Smart Control speaks to that, incorporating the features 99% of us would want. Built in ODR, recovery boost, optimum reset (greater priority given to the zone needing highest temperature), I could go on.



Their newer line of fire-tube higher water content boilers is very welcome, at least to our performance demands. (We still specify P/S on any condensing boiler, but that bit of time lag allows for a more relaxed yet precise combustion-side modulation.)



Their metallurgy and manufacturing processes are first-rate. I have seen factories in the US and Europe and Lochinvar matches, meets and in some ways beats the best of them. Boiler making is a dirty process, (cast iron foundries aside for they are not cast iron, there is plenty of opportunity to make a mess). Lochinvar's factory was as neat and clean as one could make it while still turning out quality products. Their use of 316L stainless certainly gets a nod in our office.



Their welding, passivation, enameling, cutting, finishing processes are not only efficient, but with all else we saw, any status or condition is a baseline for future improvement. They do not sit still on their last increment but start looking at the next one.

Their CNC process is state of the art. As a demonstration souvenir, they cut out remarkable one-piece steel bicycles which would fit behind a quarter. Very precise, from brain to hand, to computer and machine.



What Lochinvar understands makes a company great, is the people. To locate based on a survey of their employees, their length of commute and how to shorten that for the greatest number of people, -that goes to quality of life and speaks highly of their philosophy.



Within their faith in their people is a highly integrated QA/QC program where everyone has a stake in the quality of the product. All employees regardless of their intended position, "work the line" for at least two weeks so all know what goes in to the final product. Much less of a top-down management style, what comes across is an almost lateral style of management, yet highly professional without exception.



What was of principal interest to me and most in our group was the new Crest boiler, a fire tube design with capacities between 1.5 and 3.5 million BTUH input. This is the range we often specify for schools, performing arts centers, libraries and a fair array of our normal design work.  The firing test confirmed our expectations, full fire at 4.0" gas pressure with excellent, smooth modulation.



The company aside, the hospitality, education and their interest in our wants and needs was outstanding. Getting to see Paul Rohrs again capped off a very intense but thoroughly enjoyable couple of days.

scott markle_2

HX origin

Correct me if I'm mistaken, I was under the impression that Lochinvar was using a Gianoni HX. Is the new downdraft HX a US manufactured product?



Does this new control use communicating thermostats? (like tn4, tn2 or the aq 2000) How can it determine zone of greatest demand with a conventional stat?



I lIke the look of those large Tisun (Austrian)commercial flat plate collectors they are selling.



Unfortunately not much distribution of Lohcinvar products in my area.

Scooterp7

funny

I think it's quite a coinkydink that Brad White is going to the Lochinvar factory.







After all, Lochinvar water heaters are rebadged Brad (Bradford) Whites!

Brad White

Giannoni in Lochinvar Boilers

Well, Scott- that has always been a concern of mine, the higher water pressure drop of the Giannoni HEX. In the Lochinvar Sync line, they use two in parallel so the WPD is equal to the HEX plus header losses for double the capacity. That is fine.



But their fire tube offering has pressure drop of feet of head in the single digits and with less flash potential from low flow. As one example,  I changed my boiler specification on a current product from a series of their Giannoni-based boilers to a pair of the new Crest boilers. Each of the Giannoni boilers (800 MBH input each), needed a 1 HP boiler circulator. One of the new Crest boilers (3000 MBH input each), does the job also with a 1 HP boiler circulator, for nearly four times the capacity. That speaks to me.



Not bashing the Giannoni- the product has enabled condensing boilers to become mainstream through the Munchkin, NTI and others including Lochinvar. But with anything else, if there is another way to do the same thing with less parasitic energy, why not do it?



As for the controls, they are ModBus-based and will come with BACnet cards, compatible with most building automation systems. LonMark cards too as options. So the inputs are analog signals from sensors provided. If there are direct thermostat applications, I do not know the answer to that. The applications for these are in buildings with DDC systems, not that local control cannot be had. I just do not know.



We had a good TiSun presentation by Paul Rohrs. He made a case for flat plate applications for commercial projects and nothing against the evacuated tube types. (I am in Boston so evacuated tubes tend to win out long-term but yes, that snow issue...). All part of the mix.

The TiSun panels are of robust construction and are packaged with controls per SRCC and thus eligible for tax credits. The dialogue will continue.



I could be glib (moi?) and say, if you do not have Lochinvar representation -move! But seriously, worth asking. The Lochinvar line may not fit all that you are doing, but competition is good and I see the bar being raised by the work they are doing and the new products such as the Crest.  If that spurs others onward, the customers and the nation, through this branch of industry,  will benefit.

Brad White

I Wish!

No relation, we just had an odd way of naming kids in our family.

My sister, A.O. Smith, may take umbrage at the suggestion,  but that would be Ruud.

Mark Eatherton

Rheem him Brad...

That'll teach him to be Ruud :-)



Don't the Japanese own BWC, which owns Rheem/Ruud, which owns Raypak or some crazy incestuous program like that??



Crazy world.



ME