trying to post a pic

Steve Ebels

Steve Ebels

trying to post a pic

Steve Ebels

Sometimes ya gotta go big (SE)

This job was our home for about 4 weeks(inbetween dozens of no heat service calls and a couple small installs) It consists of about 750' of 2 and 2 1/2" steel pipe hung, "well hung" Drew says, about 25' off the floor. The boiler is a Viessmann RS-11 two stage. There are 2 hydronic unit heaters. A 220K btu heating roughly 8,000 sq ft and a 450K btu heating 12,000. The pics show some of the assembly process. I think one of them is Drew celebrating the last piece of "well hung" pipe about 25' off the floor. You can barely hear this boiler at high fire, on low fire you can't period. We left provision for more zones in the future and the factory owner is already talking about it.

The design criteria was to be able to keep the buildings at around 55-60* during -10* temps. It does that nicely. The large unit heater will raise the temp from 60* to 70* in 16 minutes in the 12,000 sq ft building.

Andrew and Mark are pretty proud of their work and so am I. The pipe runs are superb, straight as an arrow and one of those was close to 200' long right down the middle of the shop. One of the machinists (think fussy person here) complimented the guys on how nice everything looked.

We were all impressed with the Viessmann. Everything fit together nicely. The burner control and gas train came preassembled. Just plug in the connections after mounting the panels and you're done. We piped it Primary/Secondary because of anticipated disparity in flow rates for the zones. Offices about 6 gpm and the shop zone at about 65 gpm. Putting those two on the same manifold would be a mistake. (ask me how I know that)

Comments or questions anyone??

hot_rod

Large shops

The challange seems to be how to handle a call from just the small office zone. I struggle with the same question on large shop areas with small "micro zones." The shop will maintain 60-65, but I'm sure the office staff will want a bit more than that causing an under 30,000 BTU/hr load on a 400,000 BTU/hr. heat sourse, ocassionally. What are you thoughts on these mismatched loads?

On my current 10,000 shop 1200 office job I'm trying two boilers, large delta t on the primary loop, and post purge. Think I'll leave buffer tank options open also. Short cycling drives me nuts

Nice work to the installers, nice to have that much room to work!

hot rod

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[Deleted User]

Groovey...

what'd your guys think of the Victaulic? I found that once you get used to it that there's no better way to fly!

I just wish the locals had a better stock of specialty fittings.

Nice job though.

ME

Steve Ebels

Yes that is a problem

On this particular job the boiler is constant circ on the primary loop and the main zone pump. This is due to the fact that about 40 ft of pipe is outside between the two buildings. Also this simplifies the control setup. The owner wanted it that way so there would be no chance for freezing. The reset control is going to maintain the boiler between 130 and 180 based on the outdoor temp. So a call from the offices (60,000btu) really isn't going to effect whatever else is going on with the system. The heat will already be there, just a matter of turning on the office circ. The load in the shop area is pretty much constant, plus there's so much mass and water in the system you could likely heat that office zone for an hour without firing the boiler if that's all that called for heat. High mass does have its benefits sometimes.

Steve Ebels

Grooved fittings

Were the only way to do this one. I didn't like the thought of 24 and 36" pipe wrenchs falling on injection molding machines that cost more than my total life's income. All of this piping was hung overtop of a working shop. BTW, 700+ ft of pipe and not a drip anywhere. We like it so much and it goes so fast that we're exploring the availability of 1" thru 1 1/2" fittings to use on residential jobs.

Doug Wagoner

More photos

of the pipe hanging in the shop area. I need to reminise. It has been a while since I could do that kind of work. I love those vic connections. Nice looking work. There is satisfaction in a pretty job that also works well that words never describe. Thanks in advance.

Steve Ebels

Photo

of where the supply and return to the 400K unit come through. There's 200 ft of 2" on the other side of the wall. We let the pipe just rest on the strut and then anchored it where it turns up toward the ceiling. This allows the expansion and contraction on the 200 foot string to move the pipe in and out as needed. When we fired it up the pipe moved out of the wall about 1 1/2". That's another nice thing about grooved fittings. They allow a little movement that you can take advantage of when you want to.

Doug Wagoner

Photo

Thanks for the view. Great work!!