residential vs commercial

bullhorn

Our small church only needs about a 300,000 btu/hr boiler, yet being a commercial building needs to meet commercial standards. Is it possible to add the necessary controls to a residential boiler with 82.7 % efficiency to meet commercial standards?

pecmsg

Normally residential equipment isn't allowed in a commercial setting although it happens quite often.
The Local Jurisdiction Having Authority is the ones to ask, AKA your Building Department.

How was 300K decided?
What are the plans for Occupied / unoccupied outside air?
Being a church Id personally split that load 60/40.

bullhorn

We know from radiator sizing how big a boiler is needed.  Commercial boilers are scarce right now so just wondering what other options exist. Will check with inspector.

JUGHNE

In Nebr. the AHJ is the state.

Only had to add manual reset high pressure switch and manual reset LWCO.

Also adhere to clearances required by state.....exceptions made for existing boiler rooms.

Is your church gravity return or pumped return?

leonz

bullhorn said:

Our small church only needs about a 300,000 btu/hr boiler, yet being a commercial building needs to meet commercial standards. Is it possible to add the necessary controls to a residential boiler with 82.7 % efficiency to meet commercial standards?

================================================================

I would ask the inspector if you could employ a pair of 150,000 BTU Hr. boilers with H Stamps piped in series for hot water or parallel feeding a single steam header would suffice.

bullhorn

All good advice and will be adhered to. Staying below 400k btuh and avoiding CSD-1 is the goal. Hard to find a local plumber willing to push the envelope.

bullhorn

We have dual pump feed return. Custom made for twin boilers.

Steamhead

Look at the Weil-McLain SGO series. These are normally sold as residential oil-fired steam boilers. But they still have 1/2" try-cock tappings, the lower of which will accommodate a 1/2" remote-mount LWCO probe. If you're running gas rather than oil, you can fire these boilers with Carlin gas burners. You'd probably be looking at an SGO-8.

If the system can be split according to usage patterns, for example not heating the sanctuary during the week when the rest of the church is being used, so much the better. Here is a job where we did just that. An SGO-6 with Carlin EZ-Gas heats the sanctuary, and it has a secondary manual-reset LWCO and pressuretrol:

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/167918/splitting-a-church-steam-system

This job runs gravity return. Why use a boiler-feed pump if you don't need it?

bullhorn

Ouch, just found out Michigan requires CSD-1 compliance for all steam boilers, regardless of size. That will cost another couple thousand dollars.

GGross

@bullhorn
I think you or whoever you got that info from is a bit confused. However if you are in Southern Michigan then good luck dealing with the state boiler inspector down there. He would not allow a CSD-1 compliant boiler control on several installs, even after I had a letter sent from ASME stating that it was in fact compliant. The reality is it does not matter what the rules are here as we have several rogue inspectors that make up rules as they go, there is no oversight for this in Michigan, you can take them to their own court of appeals where the inspectors sit as judges. Any way, all commercial boilers need to comply with CSD-1 in MI, CSD-1 has different requirements when the boiler is over 400,000 BTU, not familiar with steam but I am sure the requirements are slightly different for steam boilers.

Your best bet here is to follow the inspectors requirements to a T. At the end of the day added safety devices are not a bad thing for you to have, and working with the inspectors is much much easier than fighting them (a losing battle anyway)

edit: I should clarify that ALL boilers need to comply with CSD-1 in MI, not just commercial. There are different inspectors for commercial, and the reports need to be filed on commercial boilers. and yes, a "residential" boiler installed on a property that is zoned commercial would be considered a "commercial" boiler

EBEBRATT-Ed

I think @GGross is right on this.

jumper

How is residential equipment insufficient?