Weil Ultra , low temps,settings

Ronbo

Hello all, hope someone can help me get my system set up right.

2780 sq ft home, bi level is 25x40 with an addition 30x26 garage below living space above. the volume of home heated area is 22,000 cubic ft

i have 1820 sq ft of ceiling loss with r-19(will upgrade)

2592 sq ft of wall loss r-13

297 ft window loss double pane

780 floor loss r-30 above garage

132' of slab on grade lineal footage

My heat loss seems to come up at about 60,000 btuh if i did it right.(seems oversized?)

i have a total of 207' of  base board installed 3/4 ' which i think can put out 62000 btuh at 125 degrees if i did that right.

Just had a ultra 155 weil mclain installed with 4 zone valves and a 40 gal weil mclain indirect. p/s set up

I need help with my settings. i have the outdoor reset set at 0 and 70 and live in newton nj 07860

my ultra has the settings as follows;

priority 1 set at 190 max degrees for indirect with a 007 PUMP 

priority 2 is  the boiler 0014 pump which im confused on what to set the temps at in relation to priority 3 i currently have em set at 110 min and 145 max

priority 3 with a 008 taco variable speed delta t pump i have set to 70 min 145 max(the sensors on this pump control the flow to keep temps close to 20 degree difference.

furnacefigher15

Priority settings

Very important



Priority 1 dhwh needs to activate both the dhdh pump, and the boiler pump.



The 007 does not have enough head capacity to overcome the boiler.



as to the other priority settings, I need more info on what is connected to those priorities



155 is a much larger boiler than you need. it will work for dhwh, but needs to be throttled back for the zones.



Can you take a picture of the install, so I have a better Idea of what were dealing with.



or explain better how the heating side is piped and what other controls are being used.

Jean-David Beyer

As usual, it depends.

On my Ultra 3, priority 1 is for the indirect domestic hot water heater. When the indirect calls for heat, the boiler circulator is shut off and the indirect circulator is turned on. This is as specified in the W-M installation manual. Since one or the other is running, to get the right flow through the heat exchanger, both of these circulators should be the same size. IIRC, the two smallest Ultras use a Taco 007 and the larger ones use Taco 0014 circulators; perhaps the very largest need even larger circulators. If the indirect is not calling for heat, but something else is, then the indirect circulator should be off and the boiler circulator should be on.



If your heat loss is 60,000 BTU/hour, it seems to me the 80,000 BTU/hour model would be more than enough. The 155,000 model is double what you need and it will never modulate down to what is required.



It is not practical to specify your reset curves in advance. I live in New Jersey and design temperature for most of the state is 14F. You need four numbers to specify a reset curve (for the U-control in WM-Ultra boilers). One specifies the maximum supply water temperature and one specifies the minimum supply water tempertature. The other two numbers specify at what outdoor temperature the maximum supply temperature happens, and the other specifies the outdoor temperature at which the minimum supply temperature at which happens. Perhaps an example would help.



For my indirect, I run at 175F because I do not use much hot water and do not need it any hotter.



For my radiant slab zone, the minimum supply temperature is 75F and the temperature does not start to rise above that until it gets down to 50F outside. From there it is a straight line up to 120F which it attains when it gets down to 6F outside.



For my baseboard zone, where I have a little more than double the amount of baseboard normally used, the minimum supply temperature is 110F and the temperature does not start to rise until it gets down to 52F outside. From there it is a straight line up to 134F which it attains when it gets down to 6F outside.



If it gets over 70F outside, all house heating is shut off (warm weather shutdown), but indirect hot water heater will operate. You  might start with these settings, but it will take a while to get them right. I first set them to the results of my heat loss calculations, but while these calculations were good enough to size the boiler, they were no where near good enough to set the reset curves.



Since my boiler is about 2x oversized, there are reasons why my minimum supply temperatures are as high as they are. If the boiler would modulate down to 2% instead of 20%, I would probably lower the supply down from 75F to72F in the slab zone and from 110F to 80F in the baseboard zone. But if I did that now, the boiler would cycle too rapidly in warm weather.



I have no clue what you are doing with priority 3 and its 008 circulator. Also, why did you pick such strange temperatures (too high) on a mod-con boiler?

Ronbo

weil mclain 155

tyboth  for quick help ....sorry about type o....it is a 0014 on priority 1 for indirect.......the pump on priority 3 for the zones is a 008 delta pump which will slow down the flow to create a delta thats dialed in for more control(options if needed, 5-50 differential in temp if needed) .....the system is piped to spec.in manual (primary /secondary) 1 1/2 header with 3/4 branch offs to taco sentry zone valves x4......the indirect has 1 1/4pipe to the 1" fittings on indirect as spec. required.

I would love someone to look at the heat loss numbers in 1st post to see if i am close in my assessment ...my boiler guy picked the size grrrrrr. i remember him saying the 80,000 was to close with the indirect also included in the mix.

with that said , thanks for your numbers but something still has me thinking about that......

priority 2 is for boilers pump/ 0014

priority 3 is for taco 008/ zone valves

both have imput locations for the high low temps you speak of

while your  indoor and outdoor numbers  i understand at 14 outdoor and 70 indoor

would you assign these to both priority 2 and 3? as they both have identical spots for these inputs and also the indoor and outdoor numbers need input on both priorities

the indirect priority 1 i also set down to 180 myself for indirect.....i have a temper valve on the indirect set to 120 so i think the tank set on the white arrow which i assume is also 120 is useless to me eh?does not seem both were needed.

here is a video of install the boiler is a 155 model but only puts out 128,000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRZfNAmJ6nU

furnacefigher15

Based on how its piped

You should only be using 2 of the 3 priority in puts.



Priority 1 should be dhwh and should turn on the pump for dhwh.



Factory settings are okay for fast recovery 190 degrees.



Priority 2 is for space heating using baseboard. Pumps controled should be the boiler pump and the zone valve header pump.



You said baseboard is sized for 62,000 btu @125 water



So reset max temp should be 125 @ coldest expected outdoor temp. and minimum temp will very, but I would start at 85 @ 70 degrees out. I would also limit the boiler to 50% of firing rate, and disable boost.



Note you will need to tweek the reset settings for your personal comfort. I gave you a good staring point setup.



you should have no priority 3 input.



Note priorities are heat demand inputs



1 should be DHWH controlled by white dial on dhwh



2 should be a common heat demand from all zone valve end switches. (since they all use the same heating temps and pump)



3 would be for a different temp setting requirement. from a different demand for heat such as a pool heater or in floor heat etc...



Boiler is not a priority and does not have settings of its own



You need to look at the wiring to see what pump is tied to what pump output

Jean-David Beyer

I still do not understand your system.

Let me try to figure out what you have and what you are trying to do. I will take it in pieces.



"my boiler guy picked the size grrrrrr. i remember him saying the 80,000 was to close with the indirect also included in the mix.'



I do not know if he understands priority boilers. I do not feel like doing a heat loss on your house, since there is not enough information, and you should be able to do it yourself if you read a suitable textbook, such as:



http://www.heatinghelp.com/products/Hot-Water-Heating-Books/26/96/Modern-Hydronic-Heating-Third-Edition-br-by-John-Siegenthaler



The price may scare you, but I assure you it is worth it. I am not a heating contractor, but I learned a lot about mod-con boilers from it, some more I learned about W-M Ultra boilers by reading the Installation manual a few times and thinking about it. I learned a whole lot more here. I intend to get Tim McElwain's book on W-M indirect boilers when the money tree blooms.



But to summarize this point, unless you are running a commercial laundry, a car wash, have those 20 g.p.m. shower heads in a two-person shower and lots of teenage girls, you may not need to make any allowance for the indirect hot water heater. Mine runs at priority 1 and it steals about 10 minutes 2 or 3 times a day to heat my hot water in my nominal 40 gallon indirect tank. In my use, the biggest problem I have is it will not modulate low enough in warm weather, and by that, I mean 50F outside or warmer. It works much better when it is about 20F outside or lower. So if your heat loss is 60 K BTU/hr, even the 80K unit is a little too big, but it is the smallest in the product line. My heat loss, when it is 0F outside is only 30K if my calculations are right, and they seem to be. My house is a Cape Cod of 1150 square feet near Red Bank, N.J.



"priority 2 is for boilers pump/ 0014

 

priority 3 is for taco 008/ zone valves"



I do not know what you are talking about here. If you have a 155K BTU/hour boiler you do need a Taco 0014 as a boiler circulator. If the indirect is plumbed across the primary loop, as shown in most of W-M's diagrams, you need an 0014 as the indirect circulator as well.



If you have only one heating zone, you might as well run it at priority 2 and have both the boiler circulator and the system circulator both run from there. So your pumping setup would be:



(If you have multiple heating zones, I suppose you use a relay box, such as a Taco ZVC400 series to activate the zone valves and run the priority 2 input.)



At priority 1, run only circulator #1, the indirect circulator.

At priority 2, run only the boiler circulator, #2, and the system circulator, #3, and not the indirect circulator.



Unless you need two different heating zones with different reset curves, just let priority 3 alone.



"would you assign these to both priority 2 and 3? as they both have

identical spots for these inputs and also the indoor and outdoor numbers

need input on both priorities"



I have two heating zones each of which needs a different reset curve. Now my circumstances are perhaps a bit unusual. What I do is have the zone requiring the lowest temperatures (radiant slab) at priority 2, and the other zone (baseboard) at priority 3. So if the slab zone wants heat, the U-control turns on circulator 2 (the boiler circlator) and circulator 3 (the circulator for the slab zone). If the baseboard zone wants heat, the U-control turns on circulator 2 and it would turn on circulator 4 (the baseboard circulator), but it does not have an output for circulator 4, so I use a Honeywell relay box to turn on that circulator.



Here is where it gets tricky, and might not work for everyone. If both the baseboard and the slab call for heat at the same time, the priority 2 gets control and the slab zone reset curve applies. The U-control turns on circulator 2 and 3, and the Honeywell box turns on circulator 4. The result of this is that both zones get heat: the slab gets what it wants and the baseboard gets something, but not enough. When the slab has enough, or when it loses control, the baseboard gets control at priority 3. That shuts off the circulator to the slab and the reset curve for the baseboard applies. You have to read about the U-control to see what really goes on. Basically, this works for me because the actual heat load in the baseboard zone is small. When all is said and done, the baseboard zone gets 20 minutes every 50 minutes and the slab gets 30 minutes every 50 minutes if they both are requesting heat all the time. Since the baseboard does not call for the heat very often, this works.



I imagine in the usual case, one would need an electrically controlled mixing valve driven by a separate outdoor reset sensor to drive the slab and run everything at the reset curve for the baseboard. My baseboard is oversized, so it does not require water any where near 180F.



"i have a temper valve on the indirect set to 120 so i think the tank set

on the white arrow which i assume is also 120 is useless to me eh?does

not seem both were needed."



I do not know what temperature that white arrow is, but it is a lot more than 120F. I have a laboratory thermomenter that goes up to 125F and the hot water at my sink goes way past it and the needle comes around and hits the pin at 25F. Perhaps the white arrow is 140F; I would need a different thermometer to find out. You almost certainly want the aquastat in the indirect, and likewise the tempering valve. I do not have a tempering valve yet; I am waiting for the money tree to bloom. If you want 120F water at your spigots, you will want a little bit more in your tank. If you set the boiler to put out 125F,  it would take forever to recover. Mine puts out 175F and takes about 10 minutes to recover. Another reason to have the tempering valve is that you may wish to seriously consider runnint the indirect at 140F or even somewhat higher to kill off legionair's disease bacteria. 90F to 120F is almost the ideal temperature for the science experiment for growing those critters. 140F discourages them, and 160F and up kills them. You probably do not want to run your indirect at 160F, though.

Ronbo

light bulb on my head

grrrrr, seems im oversized....

ok im starting to get this  so thank you men for the help.

yes, i was thinking i was doing something when i would adjust the priority 3 but was not at all. wireing looks good, pumps 2 and 3 come on when zone valves ask.

priority 2 settings is what i should be playing with. i adjusted the settings for firing rate down to 55% which i think means ill be using 65,000 btu max and moved the min to 20% meaning a low of 24,600 ....sad...sad...

ill play with the temps a bit to see how i do......after 1st test of 80 low and 125 high with 10 degree od reset  i lost 1 degree in all zones after 3hrs and short cycled too much so i need to bump up the temps but ill leave the 10 degree for now.

1.Starting to wonder if im better off setting the therms back to a set back situation of 3 degrees on two  zones timed the same and the ther two off set taking advantage of the min btu being used.which i think will also cure short cycle a bit yes?...sound good?

Jean-David Beyer

wonder if im better off setting the therms back

It seems to me you should do no setback at all until you get your reset curve correct. It is confusing enough for a beginner to adjust the reset without some thermostats fiddling with the target temperatures. For me it takes an entire 24 hour day for my system to recover from changing the reset curve. And I may not be able to continue the next day because the outdoor temperature may not be what I need to get the next data point I need.



With an Ultra 3 as oversized as much as yours seems to be, you are going to have a devil of a time getting it to work right at all. It will never condense as much as you need, and is likely to cycle too often.



Actually, I foresee you having about the same difficulties in warmer weather I have. Your house is in the same state as mine. It is about twice as big, and your calculated heat loss is about twice as big. Also, you boiler is about twice as big. But you had a choice that I did not: you could have gotten a boiler that is a closer match to the heating load.



The changes I made to get around an oversized boiler were these.



1.) While I prefer to have the reset curve be as low as possible and meet the required heat delivery, I have allowed that curve to be a little too high at the warm end so that the radiation can dump the heat faster than the boiler can produce it on warm days. This satisfies the thermostat faster, so the boiler shuts off sooner. This loses my ability to have the circulators running almost all the time in warm weather, though they do in cold weather.



2.) In my small heating zone, I set the differential to be 15F instead of the default 10F. This lengthens the time the boiler fires (and the time it stays off). But an unwanted side-effect is that the expansion (and contraction) noise is greater than it would otherwise be.



3.) I did lower the maximum firing rate in the small zone so that the supply temperature went up more slowly. This allowed the U-control to lower the firing rate more quickly and make it take more time to get to the high limit than it otherwise would. I did not dare lower the maximum firing rate below 55% because the initial firing rate is about 50%, and I did not know what would happen if I set the maximum rate below the initial firing rate. It might be OK, but I just do not know. I kinda hope the answer to this is in Tim's Book for Ultra boiles. I think it is volume 2 of this series: http://www.heatinghelp.com/files/articles/1978/AA%20AD%20MOD-CON%20BOILERS%20VOLUME%20I.pdf but he should be able to tell you.

Ronbo

sorry , was dancing with the devil bit (ultra)

ty again, sounds like your the man i need . Hopefully you dont mind helping me out some more. Your right i wont play with the stats and furthermore ill nix all set backs for a while.  wish there was some type of feedback device i could install that would record info like when all the therms come on and off/ when it short cycles and supply and return temps and building some type of common log to make the approach a bit easier from the info gained. it could simply be wireless to computer program and make life easy.

so please let me know if i  understand whats going on a bit

1. it fires up at 50% then decides what to modulate down to  (i am set at 55% now) with a low of 20% whats your low?

2.if the supply reaches its high to fast it shuts down before modulation has a chance to work its magic(is this a short cycle) or is the furnace coming on for 5 or ten then shutting off again a short cycle?

I did notice during a heating cycle it would ignite...heat for 1 min...then just cycle water without heating since supply temp was met fast...then do it again a min or two later......

3. the delta pump i have throws a curve ball in all this with another variable but could help in some ways...it can slow or speed  up to "try" and keep the difference between supply and demand any where from 5 to 50  degrees apart which works well at higher temps. when i had it working well at first i dialed it in at 20 delta when i had the supply at 160 and returns at 140....at these low temps i think i can throw that kinda control out the window but it might  help with the short cycles....ill record temps a bit better and see what happens but as i remember when the problems occurred i was at 110 supply and 108 return with the dial half way up on the 008 delta pump.

4. i need a good heat loss done, will try some more. i did this one and it came up with 60,000

http://www.builditsolar.com/References/Calculators/HeatLoss/HeatLoss.htm

this one gave me 68,000

http://www.shophmac.com/info-center/hvac-calculators/heat-load-calculator.php,000

Slant fins gave me 44000 so i must have done something wrong there.

ty again , off to stare at the boiler,lol In my small heating zone,

"I set the differential to be 15F instead of the default 10F. This lengthens the time the boiler fires (and the time it stays off). But an unwanted side-effect is that the expansion (and contraction) noise is greater than it would otherwise be" do you mean the dif of when to modulate? its default is 5 on mine.

Jean-David Beyer

sounds like your the man i need

I gotta remind you: I am not a heating professional, just a guy with the same boiler you have (different size), who lives in the same state as you, and  who reads a lot and is very interested in this, who found out, to his disappointment, that he knew more about Ultra boilers than the original contractor who sold me the boiler and installed it. Which is why I now have a different contractor for regular maintenence and any emergencies. So, objectively, I am not the man you need. You need a contractor who knows what he is doing and the wherewithal to pay him. And the good fortune to find him.



"so please let me know if i  understand whats going on a bit



1. it fires up at 50% then decides what to modulate down to  (i am set at 55% now) with a low of 20% whats your low?"



It decides whether to modulate up or down. In particular, if this is the first time the boiler has fired (mine holds only about 3/4 of a gallon and has a post firing interval of about 30 seconds to get the remaining hot water out of the boiler to where it could do some good) in a while, the control decides to modulate up since the present temperature is less than called for by the reset curve. At default firing rate (94%), the temperature rushes up and hits the high limit in less than a minute. As a result, the burner shuts off and the circulators reduce the temperature for a little while (a minute or two) and the cycle repeats. For this zone, I have the maximum firing rate reduced to 55%, so it takes longer before it gets up to the upper limit, reducing the cycling rate. There are two reasons why it takes longer to get to the upper limit. First, just because the firing rate is lower. Second, because of reason 1, the U-control gets a chance to figure out what is going on and it reduces the firing rate all the way down to 20%. Now, since my boiler is too big, and because that zone's demand is so low, even 20% is too big even if it is 0F outside (which it never is), but it helps.



I have the minimum on all three zones set to the lowest I am allowed: 20% If I could set that lower, I would. As a practical matter, it does not matter what the low is set to for the Indirect. For that, the maximum firing rate is set to 94% (the default), the low is 20%, but it never runs that low because the indirect is satisfied very soon after it gets near the upper limit.



My second priority zone is a large (24,000 BTU/hour at 0F outside) radiant slab at grade, so I can put all the heat I want into that provided it is 50F or less outside. I do not have rapid cycling with that zone.



My lowest priority zone is small (6,000 BTU/hour at 0F outside) baseboard. So I would like to be able to set the minimum there down to about 600 BTU/hour, which is impossible.



"2.if the supply reaches its high to fast it shuts down before modulation

has a chance to work its magic(is this a short cycle) or is the furnace

coming on for 5 or ten then shutting off again a short cycle?"



I do not know what the definition of short cycling is. It seems pretty clear that if the thermostat is never satisfied and the boiler goes on and off once an hour, that is not short cycling. My old boiler would go on for about 45 seconds and go off for about 150 seconds. That is cycling so fast I am amazed the thing (a 60 year old GE oil fired boiler) lasted as long as it did. It used to use up the high voltage electrozapper about every three years, but the aquastats and relays never needed replacing. And when they put in a solid state box instead, it never failed again. I guess GE made good boilers. It also ran in the condensing region and did not rust out either.



Now, for the small zone,  the new gas fired mod-con would fire for a minute or two to get up to the high limit, and then take more than that to come back down. I think it was doing 8 to 10 cycles per hour, which was way better than the old GE, but I did not like it, so I fiddled around with it to lower the cycling rate still further. I do not remember what it is now, and it depends on the outside temperature anyway, but I think it is between 4 and 6 times an hour, which I think is good enough. If not, I could make that zone run hotter supply water that would reduce my efficiency, or install a buffer tank (sort of like a giant hydraulic separator) to even things out. A dart-board estimate seems to indicate I might need an 80 gallon tank.. Does not appeal to me.



"I did notice during a heating cycle it would ignite...heat for 1

min...then just cycle water without heating since supply temp was met

fast...then do it again a min or two later......"



Yup! That is what I would call rapid cycling. And the problem is that you do not have enough load on your boiler. If you could unload your boiler on someone and replace it with a smaller model, that would help. That is probably not practical, unfortunately, but if you have surplus money lying around, you should consider doing it. But with a more knowledgeable contractor.



I guess you should lower the maximum firing rate for that zone to 55% (or lower if someone like Tim says it is OK). This will help. Another thing you can do, maybe, is run a couple of zones in parallel so the minimum load on your system is greater. For reasons of comfort, you may not want to do this.



"3. the delta pump i have throws a curve ball in all this with another

variable but could help in some ways...it can slow or speed  up to "try"

and keep the difference between supply and demand any where from 5 to

50  degrees apart which works well at higher temps."



I may be wrong about this, but I am not sure you want a delta T circulator on a mod-con with outdoor reset. The reset will try to supply the minimum temperature water you need at all times, so what is a delta-T pump supposed to do? My system, that does not have a delta-anything circulator, runs with what seems to be very low delta T values. My small zone, which seems to be overpumped, runs with a delta T of less than 1F when it is warm out, and I do not think it ever goes over 5F or 6F. So if I set a delta-T pump to higher than this, I imagine it would stop. (I do not happen to know what it would really do) My big zone is like that, but not quite as extreme, It runs at something like 1% delta T when it is warm out, and I have seen it up somewhere near 10F when it was 9F outside (design temperature is 14F around here). I am pretty sure that many on this wall would disagree with me, but for a system zoned with valves, I would pick a delta-P ECM circulator on a mod-con with outdoor reset.



"when i had it working well at first i dialed it in at 20 delta when i

had the supply at 160 and returns at 140....at these low temps i think i

can throw that kinda control out the window but it might  help with the

short cycles....ill record temps a bit better and see what happens but

as i remember when the problems occurred i was at 110 supply and 108

return with the dial half way up on the 008 delta pump."



I do not know what your heat emitters are. If you were running radiant slab at grade, they are far too high. If you are running baseboard sized for 180F water, they may be too low. You will never know until you find out the amount of emission needed in each room and the size of your emitters.



"4. i need a good heat loss done, will try some more. i did this one and it came up with 60,000



http://www.builditsolar.com/References/Calculators/HeatLoss/HeatLoss.htm



this one gave me 68,000



http://www.shophmac.com/info-center/hvac-calculators/heat-load-calculator.php,000



Slant fins gave me 44000 so i must have done something wrong there.



ty again , off to stare at the boiler,lol In my small heating zone,"



ABSOLUTELY! This is step 1. You cannot do anything else until you do this. You cannot decide which boiler to get, you cannot decide what emitters you need, you cannot set a reset curve, or almost anything else until you have this.



I figured out my heat loss three different ways, starting from the worst:



1.) My old boiler had a 0.5 gallon per hour nozzle in it and it always provided enough heat. So 70,000 BTU/hour was the upper limit as to how much heat I needed. Any calculation that gave a higher number would have been immediately suspect.



2.) I used this calculator from Weil-McLain, since I was to get an Ultra 3:



http://www.weil-mclain.com/en/multimedia-library/pdf/weil-mclain-pdf/other-downloads/boiler_replacement_guide.pdf



This gave me better numbers, but having been an engineer (in a different field) I found it unsatisfying in many ways. It came up with a heat loss of around 36000 BTU/hour, but it did not separate it on a room-by-room basis, and I never figured out if I had to compute heat loss through the floor (that was a heated radiant slab). If so, it would have come up with about 5000 BTU/hour more.



3.) I used the old Slant/Fin program that did a room by room calculation that came out with about 24,000 BTU/hour for downstairs and 6500 BTU/hour for upstairs. These at 0F outside. As I said, realistically, the load is less because design temperature in most of New Jersey is 14F and 13F in Atlantic City.



Of these, I think the Slant/Fin program is the best. John Siegenthaler's Hydronic Heating book tells you how to do this with paper and pencil. He also includes the student version of his design studio with the book. I can see how the professional version would be very useful, but not quite useful enough for me to pay for as a homeowner. The student version might be enough for you , but it will do only two zones, and will not save your work.



""I set the differential to be 15F instead of the default 10F. This

lengthens the time the boiler fires (and the time it stays off). But an

unwanted side-effect is that the expansion (and contraction) noise is

greater than it would otherwise be" do you mean the dif of when to

modulate? its default is 5 on mine."



No, the differential is in two pieces: above and below. The default is 5F over and 5F under for a differential of 10F. I set the differential on the smaller zone to 7F above and 8F below, for a differential of 15F. The diff just sets the current upper and lower limit temperatures, a window around where the reset curve specifies. If the boiler is at the reset curve, the boiler continues to do what it is doing. If it gets up to the upper limit, it shuts off. If it drops below the lower limit, it starts up. It modulates the firing rate down as it approaches the upper limit, and it modulates the firing rate up as it approaches the lower limit. For the heating zones, the temperaturs are measured  in the secondary loop near the closely spaced Ts (or hydraulic separator, as the case may be). For the indirect, the temperatures are measured at the input and output of the heat exchanger.

Ronbo

time to regroup

"I gotta remind you: I am not a heating professional, just a guy with the same boiler you have (different size), who lives in the same state as you, and  who reads a lot and is very interested in this, who found out, to his disappointment, that he knew more about Ultra boilers than the original contractor who sold me the boiler and installed it. "



yupper i had trouble finding anyone who knew what to do my self. I had 7 estimates.......i usually only get 2 but i found some crazy thinkers out there. one guy told me he would install with labor and including all parts but the  boiler for 1750......i knew he was crazy right away. several others simply had no clue and few pretended they did. the guy who installed had a good start(or so it seemed) and seemed to at least read a bit on line the night before,

i need to learn more about a buffer and look into it.

i wonder what the best action is at this point aside from replacement. wahhhhhh, this stinks! im think more baseboard or radiators and a buffer myself.Along with a 008 pump swap out to something that fits my needs. I really need a good mod con man with a great thinking cap. I have the room for the buffer.

i have four zones

zone 1 uses15285 btuh and loses 3.56 btu per cubic ft an hour

zone 2 is small at 7310 btuh and  loses 3.60 per cubic ft per hour

zone 3 is  uses 25038 btuh  and loses 2.91 per cubic ft per hour

zone 4 uses 14859 btuh / loses 2.38 per cubic ft per hr

i have the loss per cubic ft figured for creative thinkers,lol

i attached the heat loss,  the baseboard is what  i have not what i need.

the bath in zone four needs  help as its always cold.

i do have a 30 x26 by 10' high ceiling garage that i could heat ,lol

Jean-David Beyer

i wonder what the best action is at this point aside from replacement.

"i wonder what the best action is at this point aside from replacement.

wahhhhhh, this stinks!"



I think if you are going to do a self-help program and become your own expert, you better start by reading this book from cover to cover. Some of it will not be immediately important to you (like how to pour a concrete slab with radiant tubing in it), but the discipline of reading that and understanding it all will help get a broader fiew of things, and some of that knowledge my indirectly help you in unexpected ways.



http://www.heatinghelp.com/products/Hot-Water-Heating-Books/26/96/Modern-Hydronic-Heating-Third-Edition-br-by-John-Siegenthaler



Then read this one from cover to cover, preferably several times. I suggest printing it out.



http://www.weil-mclain.com/en/multimedia-library/pdf/weil-mclain-pdf/products/boilers/gas-boilers/ultra-series-3-ue/ug3_boiler_manual.pdf



You will need to think about a lot of what is in here. It tells what to do, but pretty much does not tell you why. With Siggy's book behind you, the two together will help a lot.



"im think more baseboard or radiators and a buffer

myself."



While I imagine more baseboard can help at getting your water temperatures down, until you have a room by room heat loss, you will not be able to compute the amount of baseboard (or radiator area) you need in each room. You might arbitrarily pick a maximum water temperature for your design day. If so, I suggest you pick 130F or a little less. Then calculate how much baseboard it takes to deliver that much heat. There are two possibilities. The first is that there is room for that much baseboard; the second is that there is not that much room. The baseboard I have comes with a chart that gives hw much heat I can get out of each foot for an intake temperature of 65F. The chart for my baseboard is like this:



http://www.slantfin.com/images/stories/Technical-Literature/ratings_baseline2000_r.pdf



The exact heat from whatever baseboard you get may be different, but they seem to be in the same ballpark.



But this is not a cure-all for an oversized boiler. I do not know what is. I have said what I did with mine, but I am not sure it will do the job for you; I sort-of doubt it.



"Along with a 008 pump swap out to something that fits my needs. I

really need a good mod con man with a great thinking cap."



You sure do. There is someone on Find A Contractor in Pennington, NJ that does not seem completely out of the question as far as distance is concerned. Likewise the one in Orange, New Jersey. All I know about them is what I see in their listings here. But you might wish to communicate with both of them to see if they would even be interested in making a trip to inspect your system.



"I have the

room for the buffer.



i have four zones



zone 1 uses15285 btuh and loses 3.56 btu per cubic ft an hour



zone 2 is small at 7310 btuh and  loses 3.60 per cubic ft per hour



zone 3 is  uses 25038 btuh  and loses 2.91 per cubic ft per hour



zone 4 uses 14859 btuh / loses 2.38 per cubic ft per hr



i have the loss per cubic ft figured for creative thinkers,lol



i attached the heat loss,  the baseboard is what  i have not what i need.



the bath in zone four needs  help as its always cold.



i do have a 30 x26 by 10' high ceiling garage that i could heat ,lol"



Luckily, my bathroom is just fine. It is on a concrete slab with copper tubing in it. If I needed more heat in there, I guess I would put radiant heat in the ceiling to supplement it.

CMadatMe

Back to Basics

The loss of 60,000 is reasonable. Design for NJ all the time. Based on your figures below the amount of board needed for a 160 degree design temp is



Zone 1 = 36' basic residential board

Zone 2 =. 17' basic residential board

Zone 3 = 59' basic residential board

Zone 4 =. 35' basic residential board



Now take the heat loss of each room in the zone and divide by 430 if all the rooms have enough board to overcome the loss you found your curve



This is just a starting point. I calculated for a 1gpm flow rate for each zone. Depending on what you do with the VDT pump that flow rate will change so will the board btu output. Using 160 as a design day temp will keep you in condensing mode 90% or more of the heating season. May even be able to use a 150 design day water temp. I wouldn't worry about the low end. You used 0 as your design day in your heat loss where the true design temp is 14.

Ronbo

whew

ty gentlemen,for the help, i have read and know the boiler manual by heart, it will always have a place in my heart,lol thanks for the links. im going to get myself one. You both say its 14 degree in nj but in my neck of the woods its 10 and last year we hit zero two times. im in newton nj 07860 near aeroflex airport and sussex airport.

things are a better, i found some stability at the 160 high and 110 low tonight, ran for 3 hours at 20% without stopping after a 50% 15 min start up to get to very stable temps of 140 target supply and 128 return with odr set to 10.....tomorrow ill try to take it down more. should i take the odr down 1st to match design?

What i did tonight was marry two zones together to use up that energy and it worked very well.....as soon as i let one zone close of the two, things would go awry.....so i feel it might be best to figure out a way to marry them for good. or use a buffer. once i know my lowest settings that work i can explore  other options from that data. 

zone 2 i left out of the test ,do to its size of 7310 btu need .

when all three others where on at the same time things where stable.

when any of them where removed leaving two on ,things where stable

when only the large zone 3 (25,038) things where stable

but when the either of the two mid size zones 1(15,285) or zone 4 (14859) where alone it would move toward and into short cycle mode.

when all three where on together it would mod from 20% to 40% to keep up so it would be nice to marry zone 2 and three together on same zone piped which i can do as one loop with the therm up stairs in zone 3

this would create a nice  balance of 1 -33,000 btu zone (2/3)and the other two zones at 30,000....those two i will slave off the other electrically instead of piped and pick the best location for therm....1 and 4 are only 400 btu apart but the loss between those areas per cubic foot are 3.60 and 2.38 which may cause an issue of over /under heating.....i could throttle the zone valve back i think? whew......i need a break,lol ty again.......

PS Chris how close are you?