Triangle Tube Prestige Boiler and Taco BumbleBee Pump Questions...

Javelin

Dear Heating Pros,

About 2 years ago, We bought an old 1911 house that had a gas-fired Weil McLain boiler from 1978. Although the first winter in the house was fairly mild, the heating bills were incredibly expensive for us, so we kept the inside temperature around 60 deg. and bundled up, huddled in a room with a fireplace with closed doors, etc.

About a year ago (with the very generous knowledge and experience of users of this forum), I was able to install a new TT boiler. When I was done, I had it "blessed" but a registered plumber (also a user of this forum), and all fired up well and it's been heating the house and DHW indirect tank since. My issue is that I haven't seen the savings that I had hoped for with this new ModCon boiler. Granted, I'm not really comparing apples to apples though as the first heating season, we kept out heat at 68 deg. and we're also using the boiler for DHW as I mentioned above.

A few specific questions:

1) Big enough pump?
On one of my earlier posts when I was contemplating different pumps/layouts, one user mentioned that I would need large pumps to pump all the heated water throughout the house. Most of the near-boiler piping is 1 1/2" copper, then it transforms over to old 1 1/2" and 2"/3" iron it seems to me. How do I know if the pump is powerful enough? The BumbleBees have gone as high as 12.5 GPM on the front readout, but I've never seen them maxed at what I understand is 15 GPM.

2) Too Many Ignitions?
The TT boiler shows the number of ignitions over 22,000.. that's from really just ONE heating season... Is that normal?

3) Zone 2.
I have 2 zones in this house... #1 is basically the whole house, and #2 is what used to be a porch and is now an enclosed family room. The addition was done around 1940 and instead of using cast iron radiators like zone #1, instead uses convector type radiators.. Never seems to get too hot, and in fact on cold days struggles entirely to keep up. The default curve of the TT puts max temp of the water at 170deg... Should i make it hotter?

Seems to me like I'd benefit from having someone who knows what they are doing come and tweak all my settings.. maybe that's what I'm missing to achieve my savings.. Maybe I AM saving and just haven't realized it with these colder winters.

Anyone have any input? As always - thank you all so much in advance for your expert advice. I've attached a few pictures for reference. THANK YOU!

ced48

22,000 ignitions-unaceptable-10 to 20 times more than you should have-

You can not go by the GPM on the Bee, the numbers are not real-The pump can not know the exact GPMs-So you have to do some calculations to get a better idea of where you stand-

170 degrees is already to hot-Yes, you need to get someone in who knows these boilers/systems-

Eric_32

I bet the 2nd zone/ family room is causing the fuel expenses and the boiler cycles. Every wall except one is an outside wall including the floor and ceiling. Probably not even close to being insulated enough being from the 40's.
Do you use that room often?

Harvey Ramer

What kind of heat emitters do you have in each zone? Also, what size is the main "old steel line" ?

Please go through your settings and tell us the Max heating water temp, Min heating water temp, the differential setting and the ODR curve upper and lower setting.

It doesn't look like you are piped P/S, unless this one has the internal P/S configuration.

I feel like you might not be getting enough flow through the boiler and/or not shedding heat fast enough from the emitters.

If you don't have an elevated Min setting on the ODR curve, "that" in combination with the DT pump and the small sunroom zone, could be the culprit. The TT has a 5:1 turn down ratio, and at the bottom end of an ODR curve with a DT pump on a small zone, you are in short-cycle city!

Harvey

Javelin

Harvey, Eric, and Ced,

Thanks so much for the replies. I've attached 3 screen shots showing the CURRENT settings of the system. Note that until today, they min-setting of the ODR was higher (so was the max), but I thought I'd play a bit to see if it made a difference.

We DO use that family room often, but if that's really the culprit, I'd be willing to use other areas of the house, set that zone down to 58 degs or something and see if that helps.

Few more things of note...

1) Convectors Warm.. not hot...
On the normal radiators in zone 1, when the boiler is going the radiators get really hot and the air above them is noticeably hot (if I held a piece of plastic wrap, it would likely flutter upward...) on the CONVECTORS of zone 2, they never produce that kind of heat.. luke warm really... but not too noticeably hot.

2) Insulation
I would agree that this family room has little to no insulation. I did put in new windows, but the walls are cold...

3) Convectors
In other threads some people have suggested that not enough air is flowing THROUGH the convectors, and while there are small gaps between the actual convectors and the cabinet, they are only about 1/2" in places.

4) Flow
Harvey, you I might not be getting enough flow.. Not sure if that's related to #1 above that the convector emitted are not really getting hot. The Bumblebee on Zone 2 never really seems to pump too hard.. maybe I can do something to adjust the Delta T on that zone/pump?

5) Old Steel?
Harvey, not sure what you meant by old steel pipe. I you mean the size of the iron pipes that the new copper flows into... for Zone 1 (picture attached), it's literally about a 3" pipe. For Zone two it's smaller.. I think 1.5" I.D. to

6) Options:
a) Don't use zone 2 for now... put it down to 58deg for the winter and just turn it up during holidays and the like as needed.

b) Add a ductless mini-split system to the family room for A/C in summer and supplemental heating element in winter maybe?

c) The Family room (zone 2) is a candidate for a makeover. Would it be advantageous to somehow try and swap out the CONVECTORS to more traditional cast-iron radiators (in addition to insulating as much as possible of course)? Something like these: http://www.ocsind.com/cast-iron-radiators.php

7) You can tell I like numbered lists

I would LOVE to get an expert in here to look at and set my system up. Would you all suggest just looking in the yellow pages for someone who services TT's, or should I put an "ad" up on these forums?

THANK YOU ALL AGAIN!

Jay

Paul48

What is the heat loss of that room, and what is the output of the convectors?

Javelin

Couple more photos of convectors in Zone 2. Paul.. I had a heat loss done, but will have to dig it up. Not sure how to get output of convectors...

wrxz24

Are you using the ch delay setting where you can set the amount of time between each cycle?
Does those 22k cycles include dhw too?

wrxz24

Oops, I see you have the call blocking at 5 minutes. I have mine set for 20 minutes.

Harvey Ramer

On the bumblebee for zone 2, check the supply and return sensor wiring. Make sure the proper sensors are connected to the proper terminals. If they are reversed, the pump will never ramp up "other than each startup". Also make sure each return sensor is connected to it's respective return, not the common return. Lastly, make sure the molex is properly plugged into the pump.

On the convectors, you should probably move the min temp up to 130.

Harvey

Javelin

WRX, those 22k cycles were just heating... DHW only had about 2800 total.. I'll change the call blocking to 20mins.

Harvey - I'll up the minimum to 130 for Zone 2 there and double check the connections, but I'm pretty positive they are correct.. I know they are each on their own return pipes, and the Zone 2 pump does spin up, just not usually as much as Zone 1 - I guess that stands to reason as it's less volume. What would you suggest setting the Delta T in Zone 2 Bumblebee to? What difference in temp I mean?

Harvey Ramer

In the range of 15 to 20 degrees should be fine. Play with it a little.

Once you change the settings, Turn down the thermostat for zone 1 so it doesn't come on. Initiate a call for heat from zone 2 by moving the thermostat 1 degree above current temp. Observe the boiler and the water temps in the boiler. Record on time and off time and temp difference. If the on/off time is to short, you can increase the output to that zone by lowering the DT on the pump and/or raising the minimum temp to the zone.

Harvey

RobG

Have you contacted the installers with your questions? 22K ignitions is rather high!

icesailor

Come ON guys. REALLY?

You can kiss the pig all night long. At midnight the pig turns into a pumpkin. The room with the "convector" built in? The old guys at the Saturday night Ham & Bean supper at the legion hall could produce more hot air out of that convector. A huge coil with little to none space for the hot air to leave. Get one of those under $20.00 Infra-Red thermometer guns at Radio Shack or the supply house. They are accurate enough that they use them to check people for Ebola fevers.

First off, insulate ALL those heating pipes in the cellar/crawl space. Are you heating the inside of the house or the cellar and crawl space? If the house was loosing 100,000 BTU's per hour on a cold day before you changed to a more efficient boiler and pumps, it's still loosing 100,000 BTU's per hour after you change to a more efficient system. Some are quick to advertise the advantages of higher efficiencies, But never cover the inefficient heat loss in a building. Something I know quite well. And I was burned when I replaced my old heat/ac system and didn't address the heat loss areas where I could. Which I did. Put some kind of fan into that convector space and watch that room heat up. Take that heat gun thermometer and go around the house and take readings. You will be stunned at what you find.

Tweaking may help some, but the biggest gains come from stopping infiltration and cutting down on heat loss.

Insulation is the cheapest building product you can buy and has the quickest payback.

INSULATE THOSE HEATING PIPES IN THE CELLAR!!!!!!

Javelin

Thanks ICE... Most of the supply pipes in the basement are insulated in good old asbestos.. just the near boiler supplies are not, but I will insulate them on your recommendation. Truthfully, I like having a bit of heat in the basement, and thought then that the first floor floor would feel a bit more comfortable too... no?

I actually have a FLIR E4 I bought about 6 months ago (because of the lure of hacking into an E8) to do exactly that... find all the areas of heat loss in the house and start the LONG job of tightening things up. The temps on the convectors only get to about 114deg on the surface, so guess the pipes in the crawl space under the family room are loosing a lot of their heat.

icesailor

What is the temperature of the water leaving the boiler? If it isn't hot (114 degrees isn't hot) that's why the house isn't heating. How high will the boiler temperature get to?

Harvey Ramer

icesailor said:

What is the temperature of the water leaving the boiler? If it isn't hot (114 degrees isn't hot) that's why the house isn't heating. How high will the boiler temperature get to?

If you had read all the posts???

Harvey Ramer

@javelin Did you change those settings yet and check the results?

Javelin

Harvey,

Ok, I was able to take some measurements and temp photos. Hopefully you can see something in them. A few points:

1) Attached is a grid of time and temparatures

2) Attached are various temp photos marked

3) The Bumblebee for that zone was going pretty much full bore (said 12.8 GPM) while i was down there. The other day I DID adjust the DT down to 12 thinking that it wouldn't hurt to keep pumping residual heat to that zone.

4) We have a handyman in the area that's able to crawl into that crawlspace. I'm going to get some insulation and ask him to insulate the pipes in there. What sort of insulation is best? I've seen the yellow fiberglass kind that has a foil face... would that be ok?

5) CH Call blocking is currently 5mins (for this test), but I had it at 20mins yesterday which will hopefully help any short cycling with this zone right?

6) Zone 1 (most of the house) is fine and comfortable and got up to temperature fine this morning. This family room zone2 was only at 63 deg when I went in this morning (set to 66).

THANKS AGAIN FOR YOUR ADVICE!

Javelin

Pipes going into crawlspace (candidates for insulation)...

Harvey Ramer

And while you have your handyman in there, get him to insulate that floor right away. I have cold feet just looking at it.

Something isn't right. If you are pumping 12GPM @12DT, that's 72,000 BTU/h.

I sent you a PM