Burnham heating house when heating DHW??

abifolck

Hi All,

My wife and I just moved into a house that has a fairly new Burnham MPO IQ oil burner. Our heat is radiant, and the boiler also heats the hot water via indirect. I've read the manual and have leanred about the IQ functionality; I set all of the parameters to their factory defaults shortly after we moved in.

Since it's getting warmer out, my wife and I turned the radiant heat off at the thermostat the other day. But after either of us takes a shower, the boiler kicks on to heat the hot water, and then hot water circulates through our radiators! So in other words, it seems that when the boiler senses high DHW demand, it fires up to heat the water up... and in so doing, apparently it also circulates heat through the radiators.

This is bizarre to me... Anybody have any suggestions?

Leon82

Pictures of the pumps and piping would help. Controls or relays too.

What was the reason for resetting to default?

Paul48

Can you post some pictures of the boiler piping?

abifolck

Hi there. Thanks for your interest in helping.

Instead of pictures, I've uploaded the most boring video ever taken (my boiler) to YouTube: https://youtu.be/6GxEyvLF_64

We had the boiler serviced when we moved in, and the guy recommended setting things back to defaults, and we coukd tweak them to our needs as we go. There wasn't a problem with them as thwy were, really.

Thanks again for your help!

-- Alan

Firecontrol933

Let everything cool off and then draw some hot water to get the boiler to fire to the hot water tank.
Check the piping going to the house heat and see which pipe the heat is traveling through. IE: supply or return. And guesstimate how fast it's flowing. IE: is it just slowly moving along the pipe or is it quickly moving like the circulator for the heating zone is actually running.
Post back with the results.

As for the video...... a lot better light light source would have helped. They say a picture is worth a thousand words.... a video is more like "WAIT!!! go back to that last part so I can look at it better."

abifolck

Will do! Thanks for the suggestion.. I'll try that and let you know. And I can take another video tomorrow when the light is better .

abifolck

I let things cool down for 30 mins, and then I turned on the tub full blast to drain some HW. After a few minutes the boiler fired up, and it heated up the radiators FAST. I wish I could hear the circulator pump to say definitively that it's actively pumping HW through the system, but I can't hear it over the noise of the boiler. I suppose it COULD be passively trickling, but it might as well be pumping because it reaches the radiators pretty fast.

Paul48

Shut the power off to the boiler, and disconnect the circ.

Firecontrol933

You are going to have to figure out if the heating circulator is actually getting powered up and if it is I suspect some kind of control failure or wiring mistake.
Either way, having just moved in now would be a good time to start looking for the technician that is going to do your maintenance on your boiler yearly. Check on here to see if someone is near you.

jonny88

Didn't get a chance to see video but do you have check valves on heating zone if you have a circ with internal check make sure check was not removed.Good luck

abifolck

Thanks to you guys for the advice! I'm going to have it checked out, and I'll be sure to post back here to let everyone know what it was. It didn't occur to me that the circulation pump itself (or a check valve/missing check valve inside it) might be faulty.

burnerman_2

I did not see video but if you have a flo check gently.. take a hammer and smack it... most likely stuck open and system is gravity heating .. hot wants to be cold so its rising