moisture in combustion air ?

ScottMP

This is a power venter that came from a customers house. He thought he heard a strange noise.

I have come across this on another job, where the moist air from the basement is rotting out the flue pipe and power venter. Both jobs have an atmospheric boiler with a power venter. Both jobs have had the flue pipe replced with b-vent to try and stop the gasses from condensing to soon. Also both jobs are the same brand of copper HX boilers.

What would be the suggestion. My only thought is a new sealed combustion boiler ?

Scott

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Murph'

hot_rod

That's a typical symptom

from a short cycling boiler. Very common on lightly loaded copper tube. Make sure the burner "on cycle" is long enough to warm and dry the entire flue length.

hot rod

ScottMP

Hey

You very funny guy.

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ScottMP

Would

A buffer tank help this situation ?

Scott

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ed wallace

smoke pipe

have simaliar problem with an amstrong ultra 80 plus gas warm air furnace in a hair salon with a very very damp basement ie one that floods had to replace all the smoke pipe yesturday was only 1/2 left the lower 1/2 i was wondering about double wall pipe also

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hot_rod

Maybe

depends on how it's piped and zoned. It might be a simple as a tekmar control that watches the return temperatures (boiler protection feature) and drops the loads as the return temperature falls too low.

Is the boiler sized close to the actual load. Oversizing, as you know, really leads to short cycles, especially on efficient low mass, low water content boilers. A buffer tank would help in this application, although it still needs return protection of some sort. A buffer tank might be a good fix if you have a lot of small (micro)zones, even with a correctly sized boiler.

A 3 way thermostatic piped at the boiler would be another option. The fix can be mechanical or electronic, depending on which would retrofit easiest.


Raypack includes a small bypass line and ball valve on their small copper tube boilers. It helps but doesn't guarntee the boiler is protected under all circumstances, as it doesn't sense temperature.

hot rod

Wayne_12

Is there combustion air vents into the mechanical room? In Minnesota it is part of the code. Size the b-vent according to the sizing guide. Hot rod has it right in that the boiler has to operate long enough to completely remove any condensation that forms in the flue pipe.