Here's a little pump work my team completed today.

JohnNY

3 days' work plus an electrical contractor, and an insulator comes in next week.
I'm happy with it and we're servicing the Aerco boilers next.
It's fun to work on steam but hydronics gets the technical juices flowing.
Thanks for lookin. Thought I'd share.

JUGHNE

Still lookin….

Danny Scully

Don’t be like that @JohnNY, you know steam IS hydronics 😉

RPK

Noticed there is a single triple-duty valve for all (three?) pumps? Is the top pump for backup that requires manually opening/closing isolation valves or is there a check valve hidden in there? Is the bottom a "twin vertical in-line" pump? I've never seen or worked on one of those, but see two motors there for sure. and only one set of flanges. Does it have some kind of built-in check valve so you can run one motor at time?

ScottSecor

Looks like a nice job. A lot going on in your phot, thank yo for sharing.

I am familiar with almost everything in the photo with one exception. What are the brass colored items on the top of the inlet and outlet of the lower pump? To me, it looks like steel vertical shafts with exposed bearings coming through a brass flange of sorts?

I'm thinking about the circ pumps and it dawns on me that there is a vertical inline pump (lower pump) sitting on basically a floor support. Why not just use a base mounted pump? I suspect the engineer designed it this way and you were simply following the design. In my mind your job looks to be a "critical" heating plant. Funny how they have those super efficient Aerco Benchmark boilers and "old school" (old reliable in my book) circulator pumps.

JohnNY

Hi @ScottSecor
The two lower pumps were existing. We installed the top pump as new and repiped the whole thing. I looked briefly at those brass pieces and they appear to be some sort of throttling device that I've never seen or used before, but a better answer might be "I don't know". We also installed a new VFD in addition to the two that were existing. That said, please don't ask about transducers. There aren't any. As you mentioned, we're just following orders and cashing the checks.

RayWohlfarth

Very impressive

HVACNUT

I like the Clevis hangers (rather than clamp straps) and the vibration mountings. Nice job.

EBEBRATT-Ed

They look like Armstrong Dual arm pumps (at least the lower pumps.)We installed a lot of them because there are savings it's basically two pumps in one casting with factory installed isolation valves. and you only need one suction diffuser and one triple duty valve

That being said I never really liked them. The factory installed valves can be troublesome, the pumps are heavy and cumbersome, but I guess some like them.

To me it depends on the job. If I was working in a hospital for instance, I would insist on two separate pumps with decent isolation valves.

Armstrong recommends no supports under the pump (regardless of size or weight) and wants the pumps supported by the piping (strange but true) Check if you don't believe me.

When we ran Victaulic we would come off the pump with a pipe with a welded flange and then go to Vic. Some of the Armstrongs you can buy with Sensor less VFDs. The motor somehow knows how many gpms they are pumping……not a fan of that either

That's my rant.

I realize @Johnny did not install those.

RPK

@EBEBRATT-Ed Thank you for identifying the "Dual Arm" pumps. Looks like the brass items @ScottSecor was asking about must be isolation valves. Also noted that they are equipped with a "flapper valve" to prevent recirculation if only one pump is running. Not the greatest idea for critical applications, no way to isolate and run one of the pumps while disassembling and changing the seal on the other one.

JohnNY

@EBEBRATT-Ed I was hoping this wouldn't come up, but here we are. These VFDs have no sensors connected and I brought it up to the building engineer who assured me that they didn't want to vary the pumps speeds, they only want the soft start that the VFDs provide. This is a warehouse facility for a well known art museum in New York Ciy. They run heat and cooling 12 months in an effort to manage humidity, and it seems their usage is pretty constant and predictable.

EBEBRATT-Ed

@JohnNY Art museum's, labs and other manufacturing you have to love them. Run the cooling and the heat and let them fight for control. You can hold an exact temp and humidity that way. One downside $$$$$$$$$to run.

@RPK

#8 it does have isolation valves but in my opinion are not trustworthy.

We probably installed about 20 of those and IMHO the money saved is not worth it over the cost of two standard pumps and the additional reliability.

Long Beach Ed

Always nice work from John and his men.