Boiler run times

Sammy23

New here to the board and figured heating help can help me answer a few questions. I just bought a old house in MA built in 1933. About 1800sqft. home with two stories and an unfinished basement. The house dose have fiberglass insulation in the walls how much and how well I'm not sure but I had an energy audit done and they checked so the wall are insulated. The attic has been newly insulated with r30, all the windows in the house including basement windows have been replaced with brand new double pain anderson windows. The original owner even told me he went around the whole house air sealing any drafts or gaps he could find. The heat system was recently updated, the house originally had oil steam heat. But was retro fitted with a hydro air system with ac. The boiler is a triangle tube prestige solo 60. The original owner told me it was designed for a 0 degree day. My question is now that it is getting colder the other night when it was 32 degrees out i had the thermostat set to 65. The heat turned on every 10 minutes and ran for about 12 minutes. The boiler seems to have a 165 degree set point because that seems as high as it heats the water. The avg. temps it runs at are around 120-154. It has two zones 1st floor and second floor. Its the first floor that seems to run all the time. The thermostat for the first floor is in the living room near a return. But the living room has a ton of windows. More windows then wall space. Is the boiler running as it should or could it be undersized? It just seems that if I have the heat set to 65 and it turns on every 10 mins for about a run time of 12 mins, with a temp of only 32 out. What will happen when it gets in the teens and i want to turn the heat up to 68 ?

Zman

Run Times

Your run times seem pretty normal.

The boiler has an outdoor reset curve. If it is set up correctly it can vary it's temp up to about 190 max.

The 1st zone has a higher BTU loss and will run more often.

I would wait and see how it performs in colder weather.

Running long cycles is not a bad thing, it is good.

A 60K/BTU boiler is not undersized for the house you describe. It is possible other components of the system are not sized correctly, the boiler seems about right. Did anyone do a heat loss?

Carl

Sammy23

I didn't own the house when the system was put in

All I can remember when originally looking at the house is when i bought it the original owner seemed to be really into heating. I know the coils for the air handler were oversized to be able to run low temp water to heat the house. Ive always lived in force air homes and they never ran this much. I'm just worried that my gas bill is going to be insanely high. But at the same time I know its brand new and a high efficiency system.

nicholas bonham-carter

High gas bills?

Remember that the ODR is not running the burner all the time that the air is moving through the coils, just enough to warm up the loop to the sweet spot for the outdoor temperature. You may still have to try different settings. --NBC

Weezbo

The coils of today are not the one of yester years,

this allows less expensive to own motors roll a breeze over cooler temp coils ,

i keep praying for that global warming to hurry up and kick into effect...: )

there is some possibility that you and the previous owner have different ideas of comfort ,

he may have considered long term health benifits of his wallet and happen to like it and promptly went about making things the very best and still maintain that particular aspect of comfort.

i think each of us have slightly different ideas as to what is or isnt comfortable , it went close to 40 below early this morning here , so when some one tells me they are cold i believe that . the fact that they can talk though tells me the experience i have with being cold has slightly different meaning to me than them .

your problem sounds like some parameters can be changed and you are comfortable ,... however what to do specifically is little bit sketchy at the moment .

i am big on instruments and what folks who live there say verses what some book says is supposed to be what is what. some mixers have or make small distinctions and it is something that may be as something as making some changes with a small screwdriver to make the subtle changes that one person finds more agreeable to their personal comfort than another.

i ramble a bit at times , my apologies , hang with me though , some times individual zones are purposely kept in "Lag" as it were and perhaps another in "Lead" and sometimes the system itself finds it's own equilibrium and when one thing is changed it changes everything .

that is what is good about merely meeting code ...i think the previous owner went the extra mile and spent plenty ducketts on exceeding code and that is based on only what i gather from what you have said .

you might contact him , or his installer , reason he may be the better deal is some folks savey a great deal about what is what and may even know what they want things to do ,

soon as the installer has commissioned the system picks up his tools and leaves.

*~//:) ...



you get all kinds of advise these days however just maybe he knows a thing or two he did not explain to you ...

i honestly hope that helps .

Weezbo .