lowest temp

EBEBRATT-Ed

Westover AFB, Chicopee, MA recorded -22deg this past Sunday Jan 7. Tied the old record set in 1961.

That's really cold for us. Most winters we will see -5 or-10 very briefly

NY_Rob

Brutal!

What temps do you design your systems for in those parts?

Brewbeer

I used 0F in my recent design. The super low temps made for some unusual operating conditions. 130F SWT at -5F and modulating in the high 50s% to keep up, first time I've seen it run at more than 50% to supply space heat.

EBEBRATT-Ed

@NY_Rob Most use 0 degrees here

NY_Rob

0F DD... yikes.

Our DD temp is 15F here, we had a couple of days bottoming out at 3F last week where it stayed in single digits the whole day.... and then it got windy to boot! One acquaintance ran out of oil and couldn't get anyone to service him... he bought diesel at the local gas station.

The HVAC/plumbing/delivery techs were working triple overtime.
One owner complained when his tech didn't answer 2:14am no-heat call from us (I work for a Telephone Answering Service) and we had to escalate to a supervisor at 2:30am per account instructions.
Seems that tech just worked 36hrs straight but the supervisor was expecting "more" out of him?

ratio

NY_Rob said:

Seems that tech just worked 36hrs straight but the supervisor was expecting "more" out of him?

Huh. Maybe the supervisor should've handled the call instead. I do what I can, but 36H in the saddle & I'd be done for a while!

Solid_Fuel_Man

Coldest I've seen this winter has been -18F, but I design for -30F here at the top of Maine. We have been in the single digits days and single negitive for a few weeks now.

It's always the wind combined with sub zero that is really the bone chiller!

NY_Rob

I was good with 144F CH water at 6F outdoors, but then it got windy and I lost 2deg on my downstairs zone overnight so I had to bump up my ODR curve max CH temp for two days. Soon as the wind returned to normal I was able to go back to my normal ODR curve. Wind is killer when it's coupled with single digit temps.

FranklinD

I hear you all...even by our standards it’s been a cold one here (the Twin Ports area - Duluth, MN & Superior, WI). We usually don’t see these temps until late January...this year the temp dropped to -10°f on Christmas morning and didn’t come back up until yesterday. We had 13 consecutive mornings of -15° to -28°f here. Ugh. And the temp is forecast to drop back down to -5°f as a high again starting on Friday. It’s been hell on the FD equipment I maintain.

The design temp used here is -17°f (by the few that even know what that is). Sadly my boiler is oversized, despite using the Slant/fin calculator...too much fudge in the factoring I guess. Ha. We were maintaining 67° in the house no problem, using 150°f supply water to our cast iron rads at -26°f ambient.

I think International Falls (north of Duluth) saw -38° during that stretch. Tied a record but didn’t break it.

EBEBRATT-Ed

Yeah, another year of this and I will have had enough. Be 65 in June. I usually just install but did plenty of service years ago. So where I work now they stuck me on call. It's not bad because we have 8 techs so call only hits every other month. I am glad my week on call ended this morning. 2 Friday night, 2 Saturday and 2 Sunday, 1 last night. Mostly all commercial.Plus a bunch of other phone calls. People get nervous when the temp dropped but we survived it without two many freeze ups. Sick of the cold and wearing 100lbs of clothes wares you out.

Jamie Hall

Only got down to -8 at my place, @EBEBRATT-Ed -- but we had a heck of a wind (no shelter to the northwest). Cedric held the place at 67 OK, but was running close to 45 minutes out of every hour. Interesting...

NY_Rob

Brutal temps!

Some of the techs were telling our operators "don't give me any more calls!", but we work for their company so we had to dispatch the calls. After a while they just turned their phones off because we started getting "SMS no-reply" on our system. It's warming up to 50F here this weekend, hopefully these guys get a well deserved break!!