Toronto calamity

jumper

Fear is that electric service may not be restored until Christmas. Many buildings have hot water heating. Danger that pipes will freeze. If anybody still has a gravity system with an old pilot light gas boiler or even older coal fired they may be fine. Figure out how to cheat the thermostat? Folks with generators may be out of luck if they have new fangled heating systems that fuss over electricity's quality.

Gordy

Screwed

Unless you have a ci boiler that's not finicky to dirty power from generators. Or if you have one that is finicky either rig system so pumps will circulate constant....( buys time and dirty power will operate circs). Or you will have to get an inverter to clean the power up.



Drain system to avoid damage last option.

knotgrumpy

ECM Pumps

Will ECM pumps run off of genset power?

Larry (from OSHA)

generators

My experience has been that my Lochinvar Knight runs fine with power from our GE generator which is, I think a rebadged Briggs unit. The Grundfos Alpha system pump also runs fine.



Larry

bill nye_3

Ice

This has happened before.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25499753



I have a voltage suppressor on my Viessmann boiler, it will clamp down on voltage too high or too low. It was not very expensive , I will look up the name of it. Many new generators have inverters that are said to be more voltage friendly.



 Merry Christmas, and best wishes to our Canadian friends in the cold. 5° F., brrr.

MechTech_2

Warm in Toronto

I'm feeling really proud to be a Hydronics gear head these days. My wall hung boiler (internal primary circulator) draws 170 watts, and my main secondary pump is a  Wilo Star 16 which draws 56 watts! I'm running an extension cord from my Hybrid Escape's 150 watt 120 VAC outlet to run my secondary pump, and found my old 280 watt DC - AC inverter which I plugged into the cigarette ligther which is running my wall hung combo boiler. Heat and hot water for Christmas!

Just added this to my repertoire of hydronic selling features.

I'm loving my hydronics, Merry Christmas.

Vinny_5

I had contacted Lochinvar last year asking a similar question

My question:

Hi, I have a wall hung Knight WHN155 and recently had a Generac 17Kw whole house standby generator installed and haven't used the boiler under generator power as of yet.  I have read on a Generac forum that Buderus boilers have been tempermental and won't run  while under generator power but have not read that anywhere about the Knight.  My question is do you have any knowledge of the Knight having any problems while under generator power and if so is there any voltage line conditioner you can recommend that I can hard wire to the boiler's electrical connection?  This is a link to the thread if you wish to see it:

[u][color=#0000ff]http://www.zillerelectric.com/forums/showthread.php?t=907[/color][/u] 

Lochinvar's answer:

We do not have any data determining how the Knight heating boiler will or will not function when using a generator. This is a question that we are asked more and more often and something we have begun to research. In situations where customers have had to use them they have had more success with the more “expensive” generators. Our control needs to between 108v/133v and the htz needs to be between 57-63htz. Please be aware that these numbers are simply guidelines. We have also seen situations where the integrated control board works perfectly fine, but the fan has an issue operating under generator power. We have recommended voltage conditioners in the past, but do not have information on specific manufacturers. I hope this has helped! If you do have any more questions please feel free to contact me.

Jamie Hall

For what it's worth...

I've never had a problem with my steam system running off my generator -- an old but sturdy Generac.  It is not one of the modern inverter units; it's an old fashioned two pole, 3600 rpm generator.  Noisy, yes.  Not terribly fuel efficient, yes.  But -- so far at least it's always started (hooray!) and runs the place.



The issue is four fold: one, correct voltage.  Two, correct frequency.  Three -- and this is subtle -- something reasonably approaching a sine wave.  Particularly with the more modern electronics, number three is really important, but there are UPS units (which  aren't a bit cheap) which can tidy up the non sine wave power from cheaper inverter type generators (the more expensive ones produce a reasonably good sine wave as is -- which is partly why they are expensive.  The fourth issue is grounding.  Unless the generator is properly grounded to your household wiring ground -- in addition to the neutral connection -- you are going to have problems.

beezer

me 2

I've run my Lochinvar wall mount a few days on the generator when the wind took out the power lines. Coleman 1750 watt... nothing special. boiler ran fine, it's 3 years old, natural gas fired