One year ago this month

Steve Minnich

My last boiler installation, my house. My tools have never been as organized as they’ve been these last four years. 

EdTheHeaterMan

Do you sleep there? With a boiler room wall like that, who needs Artwork?

DanHolohan

So proud of you, Steve. 

Steve Minnich

Thank you, Dan. 

Steve Minnich

MikeAmann said:

That is so neat and orderly, that I can't follow it. Designed by Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius Great job.

I have a CAD drawing of it that makes it easy to follow. It’s actually very simple. I just added some thing for fun. I’ll share it later. There was no way to get a straight on photo of it because it’s got floor cabinets two feet in front of it that serve my woodworking shop. 

hot_rod

great piping!  I like seeing horizontal manifold mounts to eliminate all the loops at the manifold 

Steve Minnich

hot_rod said:

great piping!  I like seeing horizontal manifold mounts to eliminate all the loops at the manifold 

Thank you, Bob. 

ronbugg

Real neat job. It is a code violation (NFPA 70) to use the conduits to support cables. I do it too makes a neat job.

HomerJSmith

The only thing that I would improve is to insulate all that piping with pipe wrap. I love symmetry. It is the basis of beauty.

Steve Minnich

HomerJSmith said:

The only thing that I would improve is to insulate all that piping with pipe wrap. I love symmetry. It is the basis of beauty.

I’ve insulated the pipe to the indirect water heater because it was fighting my shop AC in the summer. Vegas summers provide enough of a battle. I’ll eventually insulate the rest. 

Alan (California Radiant) Forbes

I really have to look hard to find anything questionable and it's truly a work of art. I'm being very nit-picky when I see separate purge assemblies on the returns. Since you can isolate the supplies, all you need is one, no? I also put it closer to the LLH to rid more air.

Does that condensate pump come with neutralizer?

Steve Minnich

The purge ports have been my habit since I started. I didn’t see any sense in changing that for my last one. 

Air has never, ever been an issue with the way I pipe my systems. After the initial manual purge, it’s less than a few minutes for the system to take care of the remaining microbubbles. Of course, that’s dependent on the water volume. 

Umm, yes. This isn’t my first installation of a modulating condensing boiler. On mine and every one of my customer’s installs, I (we), would test the pH of the water in the reservoir and most of the time we would change the neutralizing pellets. 

Don’t let the moniker of “Tinman” fool you. 

Do you read PHC News? I was their hydronics columnist the last four years until I had to retire just recently. 

Steve Minnich

This is my system. I provided CAD drawings to all of my customers so that any tech other than myself isn’t scratching their heads for 30 minutes trying to figure out what I did. That said, I did some things on my system that I would never do on someone else’s. The isolated pressure gauges piped parallel to each circulator is a good example. 

Steve Minnich

And I just realized that’s not the final drawing. 🤷‍♂️

Steve Minnich

The final drawing. 

EBEBRATT-Ed

A work of art for sure

EdTheHeaterMan

And here I am following that same diagram.

Alan (California Radiant) Forbes

I'd like to know what you discovered about your system, mainly the pressure drop through your radiant loop and the drops through the rads at different loads to see if in fact, the pumps keep the ΔP stable and then, with the pumps set at "Fixed Speed" to see what the pressure drops are.

You have two models of Taco ECM pumps documented, both seem to have the same characteristics (max. 18' head, 16 gpm flowing), but the ones that you installed look the same.

How does your iSeries mixing valve get along with the boiler's ODR control?

I see this as your laboratory for experimentation; very cool.

Steve Minnich

That was, and still is my plan. I just haven’t been able to do it yet. Not a high priority right now. Good eye. Both systems pumps are currently Taco 0015e. I’ll use them for a while but will also be popping in an Alpha 2 at some point. Lots of new stuff still in inventory from my contracting days.