New Boiler and Questions

Seth_2

I recently replaced and relocated the boiler and water system in my house (Nov. – Dec. 2003). My house is a 1962 single story ranch that had a 30 x32 addition added on in 1998. The addition has a walkout basement bring the total heated space less garage to approximately 3000 sq ft. I relocated from the future garage to the basement and basically re-plumbed the ranch to replace the ½” main water lines and add a pantry with washer dryer and mop sink.

The house originally had a Kenmore 150K BTU boiler rated at 82% efficiency with 3 zones. The hot water heater was around the same vintage. I installed a Weil McLain GV-4 with a 40 gallon gold plus indirect hot water maker. The plumber I hired was recommended by the owner of and HVAC Company that does forced air only and I deal with through work for custom sheet metal fabrication. It’s tough finding good contractors.

I was satisfied with the plumber except for the final detail of checking everything out and maybe following up a month or two after the job was complete. Overall I am pleased and would recommend him to others. I’ve had a few interesting issues to share followed by a couple of questions that maybe someone can help answer for me.

First of all I had two pipes burst in my basement in early January after the boiler was relocated there. Fortunately we were home and my wife woke me up at 2am when she heard the loud banging from the boiler and the water running. The only reason I can explain the pipes freezing is due to the residual heat from the boiler, the temperature is always about 62 degrees and since we were not heating the basement above 60, the water never circulated through that zone. The cold creeped in through the exposed wall and froze the pipes. I was able to fix that myself and added an electric thermostat to kick on twice daily for 15 min.

Question 1: Should my Plumber have realized this could happen and recommended something? I don’t blame him and never thought of it until it was too late.

My main concern develop when I went to label my zone valves, supply and return lines last week. It appeared that the water was running in reverse through the entire system. Come to find out, I discovered that under the cover plate to the main boiler circulator pump the black wire was sticking out of the wire nut that energizes the pump. I am sure the system has been running like this day 1 since the temperature gauge was not even close to the boiler set point (actually return temp.) and the residual air in the system never seemed to go away until I manually bled the system.

Question 2: What effect could this have on the system in regards to efficiency and or the system itself?

Question 3: I was thinking of installing a outdoor air reset and priority zone valve controller in the future. The Weil McLain zone valve controller is set up for 4 or 6 zones. I have 7 including my priority hot water. Can an additional zone vale controller be tied in to cover all the zones? I am also planning to add one radiant zone in the future to heat my tiled entryway, kitchen and bathrooms. Can I connect the additional zone to the circulator pump controller instead?

PS – Thanks for the help. The wall was recommended from a friend in the HVAC business and I began reading the wall prior to doing this project.

heatboy

What is the input of the boiler?

At first glance, the supply and return piping to the indirect heat exchanger is undersized, either a little or a lot depending on the boiler size. Sizing the piping according to boiler input will help recoverd output ratings. 1" and possibly 1 1/4" Supply and return should be used. While the WM indirects have very little pressure drop through the outer tank, they do require a substantial amount of flow. A dedicated circulator would be a much better choice of your application. The way it's piped currently, the heating system will be off for quite some time during priority recovery, if that's how it is controlled.

hb

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Seth_2

Input of boiler

The boiler supply and return are 1" and the indirect is connected with 3/4" at both supply and return. It's setup like any other zone on my heating system. I did chack out the documentation for the indirect and it recommended 1" pipe.