Circulator options and is my setup overkill?

BigEHead

I have an Alpine 150 boiler that services 2 zones and an indirect hot water heater. I have 4 circulators, a taco 0014 as the boiler circulator, and 3 taco 007s for the 2 zones and the indirect. To me this seems like overkill. I'm preparing for when one of the circulators die, and i'm most likely replacing with equivalent ECM motors. My question is, is this overkill? Wouldn't zone valves make more sense? I'd want to replace the boiler circulator with a delta T circulator, but would that make sense with the 007s? the indirect is right next to the boiler, and one zone is the basement which is where the boiler is (probably no more than 50 ft of piping total. The last zone is first and 2nd floors of the rest of the house. Thanks for any insight.

EdTheHeaterMan

I am assuming that your system is piped as a primary/secondary design and there is a boiler pump to make sure there is sufficient flow thru the boiler.

I'm gonna look up the boiler and see the requirements

It appears that the Taco 0014 is the factory supplied circulator pump for the boiler loop. You need between 11 to 14 gallon per minute on the maximum boiler output of 118,000 BTU Net assuming a 20° ∆T. Also that heat exchanger may be rather restricted so a more powerful pump than a 007 is required. Is your electric usage too high with standard pumps?

As far as zone valves are concerned. What is the total BTU requirement if both CH zones are calling at once. is it near 11 GPM? one Taco 007 may not be able to handle 11 GPM at the required Head for your system. But one Taco 007 can handle 7 or 8 GPM on one zone. So zone valves for the CH heat zones may not be a viable option without getting a bigger pump.

BigEHead

Thanks Ed. Rough estimate is 30K BTU for basement, and 100K for rest of the house.

SuperTech

I wouldn't run a variable speed delta T circulator on the boiler. That water tube heat exchanger is restrictive and you don't want to lower the flow to it.

A variable delta P circulator and zone valves on the secondary piping would be fine and more energy efficient. Or you can stick with circulators and install ECM circulators.

Zone valves use less electricity but zoning with circulators tends to be more reliable in my experience.

BigEHead

Thank you SuperTech, according to Taco, the equivalent ECM to the 0014 is a 0026e which is significantly more than even the Viridian Delta T. Would you do that if replacing with ECM? I'm assuming the 007e would be the best replacement for the 007 instead of the 0015e3/0018e. Thanks!

SuperTech

I'd stick with the 0014 for the boiler pump. For the zones if you are sticking with circulators the 007E would work well. Or if you want to get fancy and really dial in the flow you can get variable speed circulators like the Viridian or Grundfos Alpha