Nice Job, Beckett

Steamhead

Those of us who've been in the business for a while will remember oil-fired hot-water boilers with combined aquastat relay/oil primary control units. My 1983-vintage Burnham V-14 came with such a control, a Honeywell R8182H, mounted on the original Sunray FC burner (which I still have) and later transferred to the Beckett NX. The aquastat probe on this one is at the end of a 3-foot armored capillary tube that reaches around the side to the well. Some time ago, I'd gotten Beckett's #52199 kit which couples their AquaSmart 2012-compliant aquastat relay unit with their GeniSys primary control to install on the old faithful boiler, but never got around to it.

Well, this evening I got home, ate dinner and prepared to take a shower, when I heard the NX start, stop quickly and not restart. Uh-oh, not good- last thing I want to do on a Sunday evening is fix my own boiler! I reset it and it did the same thing- flame came on as usual but shut off after trial for ignition. Changing the cad cell didn't help, further troubleshooting revealed the flame detection circuit in the old control had finally quit.

So I unpacked the Beckett kit and installed it. The job was a lot easier than I thought.

The AquaSmart control in the kit comes pre-wired. All the wires feed through two BX-style whips to a standard 4x4 square ("1900") junction box extension ring, and are labeled according to which AquaSmart terminals they connect to. All the wiring is done in this extension ring, which has plenty of knockouts for the cables that used to connect to the old control, and creates plenty of room for all the wires. The GeniSys mounts on top of the extension ring. The AquaSmart mounts at some convenient point where the whips will reach. Here's what it looks like installed:



Here is a close-up of the extension ring setup:



And here's where the probe goes into the well, at the end of the supplied extension cable. The supplied clip didn't fit this type of well, so I used a piece of wire to hold it in place:



The job took a couple hours, far less than if one has to wire everything up from scratch. This kit is a well-thought-out combination of standard parts, which must have been put together with service personnel in mind. Nice job!

Solid_Fuel_Man

I remember those armored capillary remote bulb systems. The GeniSys is a nice system. Good to get some feedback with your results with this retrofit.

You mean to tell me you have a water boiler? Oh the indignity.😂

HVACNUT

I dont know why you didn't just shell out $14,000 for another L8182.
Sunray FC-134? Ah, memories.

Steamhead

Solid_Fuel_Man said:

You mean to tell me you have a water boiler? Oh the indignity.😂

Well, that's what my great-grandfather got when he had the house built in 1924, and I'm way too old to rip it out and start over

HVACNUT said:

I dont know why you didn't just shell out $14,000 for another L8182.

Sunray FC-134? Ah, memories.

C'mon, you know contractors don't have that kind of money

I like the Sunrays- too bad the company was mismanaged out of existence