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How to tell if I have condensing problem?

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unclemat
unclemat Member Posts: 3
edited January 2016 in THE MAIN WALL
Hello, I am looking for some help. I am wondering if I may have a condensation problem with my conventional gas-fired boiler that does not have any boiler protection.

The boiler is Weil McClain Gold CGa 6 (way oversized for the house, btw, it's 146k BTUh boiler, the house heat loss calculated to about 40k). It serves 4 zones currently, 3 of them are convectors/baseboard, but 1 consists of Runtal panel radiators, Burnham cast-iron baseboards and one wall recessed cast-iron radiator.

I worry about that zone potentially sending cold water to the boiler. I recently added a thermometer on the return of that zone and indeed it looks like temperatures can stay low there, like 120F.

Before I go into optimizing the system/adding boiler protection, how can I tell that I actually have a problem? I did not notice any dripping fluid or anything like that under the boiler or in the flue. How to look?

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  • CMadatMe
    CMadatMe Member Posts: 3,086
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    Think page 20 of the installation manual pretty much sums it up and provides proper piping drawings for systems with return water temps less then 130 degrees.

    There was an error rendering this rich post.

  • unclemat
    unclemat Member Posts: 3
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    Hello, thanks for the link. I have the manual and read it.

    Before I go and pipe a boiler bypass - which due to how piping is arranged is not an easy task, I'd like to know if the problem is there in the first place.

    I want to do a major repiping and adding a buffer/reverse indirect to reduce short-cycling, but that's a project for summer ,(or I may replace the boiler completely with something more appropriately sized), so I don't want to spend time/effort on something that may not be strictly necessary.


  • unclemat
    unclemat Member Posts: 3
    edited January 2016
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    Well, I added a Pete's port, so I can insert a probe right into the pipe. The return temp varies, depending on what's going on. The zone is fairly overradiated, and the boiler is oversized, so the cycle is very short - thermostat shuts off pretty quickly so the return temperatures seem to be on the low side.

    Since sitting in the basement for too long gets boring, I actually want to fashion an Arduino contraption that will log thermostat calls, boiler firing cycles and temperatures...

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