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Dead End
Ironman
Member Posts: 7,441
One of the great things about this trade is that it never ceases to amaze me how big of a knuckle head some folks can be.
We began a boiler replacement a few days ago for my next door neighbor. His place is a couple of hundred yards away. He's the closet to me and that's as close as any neighbor should be. One of the nice things about living in the country. He's not the knuckle head. He's a great guy and we get along well.
Anyway, we're installing a Knight wall hung. There's a 30+ year old Burnham and the house has baseboard. The Burnham's staying for a backup. He's building a dog boarding kennel which we put in slab radiant in a few months ago. That's connected back to the Knight in the house through injection mixing. We got the near boiler piping completed the other night about 8:30 and started bleeding air to get the house running again as the weather here is pretty could. We kept bleeding air from the baseboards but couldn't get any flow on one side of the house. It's a one story rambler, L shaped, each side about 30x60', direct return piping. The supply splits a the middle of each side of the house just above the center beam. From there, it heads to the perimeter on either side and comes back to the center beam on the other end and Tee's into the return. At least, that's the way it was on the half of the house that had flow. And it was originally that way on the side we were trying to get flow in without having any success. Add to that the fact that there was no light on the side we were having trouble with because my good neighbor has at least one small eccentricity: he thinks it's a sin to buy light bulbs. Eight porcelain light holders on each side of the basement and only one in the corner near the foot of the stairs, which had a 40 watt bulb, worked. It was not much better on the other side, but we got by with our flood lamps. No outlets on the dark side, too. And to improve matters even more, the entire basement is cluttered with more iron than a scrap yard. My neighbor's a well driller and he has another eccentricity: he never gets rid of anything, he puts it in the basement.
So we can't get around the side of the basement that has the flow issue, let alone trace the piping out. It's now 10:30pm and I tell my friend that he's got heat on the bedroom wing of his house and that I'd be back in the morning to try and figure out what's wrong on the other side. He's a great guy. He says "don't worry about it, we''ll be fine". Did I mention that it's 10:30pm - on Friday.
I returned the next day to do something I should have done previously, but didn't because I forgot that I had some of these on the truck: I put a ball/purge valve in the return line and began to power purge. I got great flow from the side of the house that had heat. On the problem side of house nothing came out of the hose! When we bled the rads the previous night, we fed water alternately from the supply and return until nothing but water was coming out of the coin vents on each rad. Now, I get nothing from the purge valve near the boiler.
I grab my flash light and begin to stumble over the scrap through the darkness tracing out the pathway of the piping. I had tried the night before and had come (incorrectly) to the conclusion that it was just a single series loop on that side. As I finally got all the way around and back, the problem suddenly became all to clear: this side was originally a split loop and when the knuckle head removed some baseboards near the end during remodeling, he connected both ends of the split loop together and capped off the return, thus forming a dead head. Maybe I should have titled this thread: Knuckle Head Makes a Dead Head.
I showed it to my friend and asked him when the remodeling was done and who did it. He told me who had done it and then scratching his head said: "I dunno; maybe around 2000". I said: You've been without heat on that side of the house since 2000 and never noticed it?" He said: "Nah. We use the wood stove on that side and it keeps us warm!" ;(
We began a boiler replacement a few days ago for my next door neighbor. His place is a couple of hundred yards away. He's the closet to me and that's as close as any neighbor should be. One of the nice things about living in the country. He's not the knuckle head. He's a great guy and we get along well.
Anyway, we're installing a Knight wall hung. There's a 30+ year old Burnham and the house has baseboard. The Burnham's staying for a backup. He's building a dog boarding kennel which we put in slab radiant in a few months ago. That's connected back to the Knight in the house through injection mixing. We got the near boiler piping completed the other night about 8:30 and started bleeding air to get the house running again as the weather here is pretty could. We kept bleeding air from the baseboards but couldn't get any flow on one side of the house. It's a one story rambler, L shaped, each side about 30x60', direct return piping. The supply splits a the middle of each side of the house just above the center beam. From there, it heads to the perimeter on either side and comes back to the center beam on the other end and Tee's into the return. At least, that's the way it was on the half of the house that had flow. And it was originally that way on the side we were trying to get flow in without having any success. Add to that the fact that there was no light on the side we were having trouble with because my good neighbor has at least one small eccentricity: he thinks it's a sin to buy light bulbs. Eight porcelain light holders on each side of the basement and only one in the corner near the foot of the stairs, which had a 40 watt bulb, worked. It was not much better on the other side, but we got by with our flood lamps. No outlets on the dark side, too. And to improve matters even more, the entire basement is cluttered with more iron than a scrap yard. My neighbor's a well driller and he has another eccentricity: he never gets rid of anything, he puts it in the basement.
So we can't get around the side of the basement that has the flow issue, let alone trace the piping out. It's now 10:30pm and I tell my friend that he's got heat on the bedroom wing of his house and that I'd be back in the morning to try and figure out what's wrong on the other side. He's a great guy. He says "don't worry about it, we''ll be fine". Did I mention that it's 10:30pm - on Friday.
I returned the next day to do something I should have done previously, but didn't because I forgot that I had some of these on the truck: I put a ball/purge valve in the return line and began to power purge. I got great flow from the side of the house that had heat. On the problem side of house nothing came out of the hose! When we bled the rads the previous night, we fed water alternately from the supply and return until nothing but water was coming out of the coin vents on each rad. Now, I get nothing from the purge valve near the boiler.
I grab my flash light and begin to stumble over the scrap through the darkness tracing out the pathway of the piping. I had tried the night before and had come (incorrectly) to the conclusion that it was just a single series loop on that side. As I finally got all the way around and back, the problem suddenly became all to clear: this side was originally a split loop and when the knuckle head removed some baseboards near the end during remodeling, he connected both ends of the split loop together and capped off the return, thus forming a dead head. Maybe I should have titled this thread: Knuckle Head Makes a Dead Head.
I showed it to my friend and asked him when the remodeling was done and who did it. He told me who had done it and then scratching his head said: "I dunno; maybe around 2000". I said: You've been without heat on that side of the house since 2000 and never noticed it?" He said: "Nah. We use the wood stove on that side and it keeps us warm!" ;(
Bob Boan
You can choose to do what you want, but you cannot choose the consequences.
You can choose to do what you want, but you cannot choose the consequences.
0
Comments
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Heat
They don't teach flow at Knucklehead University. The most popular course is "How to Pump Heat".0 -
He knew It wasn't working
I was just over there and found that he had cut a compression coupling in the dead ended line to try to purge it. I guess that when the rads got hot from him opening the line at that point, he tightened the coupling up and went his merry way.Bob Boan
You can choose to do what you want, but you cannot choose the consequences.0
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