seeking input on Munchkin dependability

Jim Adezio

I am condsidering replacing the nightmare Glowcore boiler in my house with a Heat Transfer Products Munchkin. After the bad experience with this Glowcore I would really appreciate any feedback that I can get from homeowners who have and are using a Munchkin for their heat. I live in a 1920's arts and crafts style home with radiators and not much insulation.Any input (positive or negative) would be greatly appreciated.

mark_29

that would be a great boiler for that chicken coup..

jalcoplumb_2

have many

radiator retrofits and old gravity retrofits and all customers are happy. Make sure the contractor follows the installation instructions and all will be well.

good luck
joe

Ted_5

Look into Viessmann boilers

and post this same question asking about the Viessmann Vitodens 200 94.2% AFUE. In my opinion the Munchkin is a boiler destin to follow in Glowcores foot steps!!!

Ted

Unknown

Radiantted, are you serious?

That's pritty harsh.

Why exactly do you feel that the HTP mini-boilers will fail as the Glowcores have?

I'm not so sure how these things will hold up myself. It's a long race. I see too many of them being slammed in by Freddy Fluxbrush types around here. Can't do that with the Vitodens as you know.

Team HTP, this is your call to arms.


Gary

To Learn More About This Professional, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in "Find A Professional"

Unknown

Ted, you may be correct

about Munchkin, time will tell. There is a difference with the Glowcore as compared to the Munchkin. The difference is company ownership, Dave Davis and his people are dedicated to making their product work. They are there to assist the installer and homeowner with their problems. My experiences with Glowcore are many and not good. One of the most frustrating things was the lack of support from the company.

It is a good idea for everyone who is going to install new products Munchkin, Viessman, Buderus, Monitor etc to get factory training. There are going to be many new products coming in the future all of them will be working toward higher efficiency, safer operation, better diagnostics, versatility,and hopefully be somewhat user friendly for both the homeowner and the installer. In my travels around and looking at installtions I find many times it is not the product that is the problem but the way it was installed and set up. If everyone put a combustion tester on the equipment at time of installtion and adjusted according to factory specs we would all be a lot better off.

munchkin-man

No need to make any comment Tim said it all thanks Tim

Dave Yates (PAH)

From my personal experience

as someone who had a GlowCore. After that experience, I swore I'd never touch another condensing boiler. In its place, I installed a Burnham Revolution and that proved to be a very reliable source of comfort.

But time moves on and waits for no man! My customers began inquiring about ultra-high efficiency boilers & I gave them menu-driven quotes with options for both standard and high efficiency condensing boilers. I had several who requested pricing on the Munchkin.

To my surprise, more than 50% have chosen the higher priced condensing boilers. Rising fuel prices have given rise to changing the way they heat their homes.

I hesitated on installations of condensing boilers due to my previous GC days, but a trip to ISH in March of 2003 opened my eyes. Condensing boilers are here to stay and efficiencies exceeding 100% are within reach (already in use in Europe). So, being that I want to provide my customers with great service & products, I decided to install a Munchkin in my own home. It sits beside my Revolution and they both are connected to my home's radiant system as well as my AL73 indirect tank.

My personal experience between the GC and Munchkin is best described as the difference between night & day. Not one single problem following the installation has occured. My customers are not experiencing any ongoing problems, although we did experience a few in our first few installations. Some were a result of our not following the installation instructions (combined vent length was too short) and others were factory problems. But in both instances, we found the HTP folks very willing to provide top-notch service.

The times they are a changing.



To Learn More About This Professional, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in "Find A Professional"

Tim Gardner

What does "efficiencies exceeding 100%" mean? I guess I don't understand what the efficiency rating is if it can be more than 100 percent. I always thought that it was the percent of energy converted into usable heat.

Thanks,
Tim

Ken_8

Who's to say the Viessmann

won't go the same way as its bigger brother? Vallaint?

I suspect that is exactly what will happen.

After the Vallaint debacle, I'd be careful with any non-North American manufacturer.


To Learn More About This Professional, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in "Find A Professional"

jw

Tim;

Efficiencies cannot be more that 100% in a combustion appliance.
With a GS heat pump you can get up to 450% efficiencies! This is the ONLY reasonable way to use electricity to heat. Installed cost is a bugger tho.

steve_37

viessmann

Hey Ken,
Viessmann is here to stay. They are committed to our heating market, just visit their new facility in Warwick R.I.
I have been installing them for 6 or 7 yrs. and frankly they are killing my service end of the bussiness.
We use to make a lot of money fixing old equipment at some of our commercial sites, been yrs with no calls on some.
But then again I sleep better at nite not getting called out all time.

steve

Uni R

Euro ratings

The Europeans came out with that rating around 1991 and I'll bet they never figured that anyone would get over 100% so now it looks pretty silly. They judge overall energy consumption and had an ideal of 100% but the most efficient systems exceed that.

munchkin-man

Efficiency AFUE or Stack combustion efficiency

AFUE (Anual Flue Utilization Efficiency)is a fixed rating achived under strick qudelins and specific testing criterior. It remains constant.
Stack efficiencies change based on co2 and stack temperature. The Munchkin brings the return water from the heating media back through a set of coils behind the target wall that are cooler than the flue gas being exspelled out in to the atmosphere that has to run passed them thus sucking the temperature out of the flue gas and transfering it in to the water for reuse thus decreasing the flue gas temp being exspelled. The temperture of the return controls the efficiency by sucking the flue gas temps down to no greater than 140* and down to say 70* this produces 100% or greater STACK efficiencies.

Mike T., Swampeast MO

100+% efficiency

I have this strange feeling that something has been "left out" of the BTUs-in/BTUs-out equation. Something to do with the state of matter of the fuel and the state of matter in which the combustion product must exist in the atmosphere.

NOT a breaking of law--but recovery of energy that never made it into the BTUs-in portion of the equation to begin with...

I've tried and tried to understand but it all seems to go back to a circular definition.

How do you vaporize a vapor?

Mark Eatherton1

So, Ted....

How many Munchkin boilers have you installled??

Just curious:-)

ME

Ted_5

I have not installed one.

When I first looked at it, I did not like the looks of it. I try to make my jobs look as good as possible. Then I looked inside and saw all the wires that ran this way and that way. It just didn't look professional. It looked hard work on [not service friendly] what if the condisate trap was pluged. How do they get sealed combustion approval with no seal on the lid. The heat-X is put together with o-rings at each loop end on sup/ret and for added leak protection high temp silicone!!? To hold it all together put some band iron around it. The wall thickness of the 316L is very thin [around 1/32] that is good for rapid heat exchange, but how will that hold up under aggresive condensate and what is the velocity going trough one of those loops, is it less the 4 ft/sec. Just some red flags that went up for me.

Ted

bill clinton_3

lies, damn lies and efficiency ratings

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. To exceed 100% efficiency, the total amount of latent and sensible heat leaving the boiler would have to be less than that in the combustion air coming in. If you set everything up just right with freezing cold return water entering the boiler and warm ambient air, it is possible to get this situation, but under any normal circumstances, NO! Consider a condensing boiler operating with 60 degree ambient temperature, 50% humidity: Exhaust at 120 degrees and by definition 100% humidity. Who in his right mind will claim that the exhaust doesn't contain more heat energy than the make-up air? That energy came from the fuel burned, and it ain't going into the house!

Any time you have a manufacturer claiming his product exceeds what is physically possible is a good time to avoid that product.

Bill

Tim Hodgson

Munchkin reliability

I have installed 5 munchkin boilers and had no problems for the first 14 months. I have worked on 2 units several times, now. I first found a broken blower wheel on each unit, they both received new blowers. A month later each one had the new blower motor fail. On one of those boilers had a second new motor fail. I'm starting to have doubts about the component reliability.
Tim

jerry scharf

on beyond zebra (100% efficiency)

The only way I could see to get the boiler beyond 100% would be to put in a small heat pump using the exhaust gas as your heat source. With a COP of 3-5, you take the air in at 60 and spit it out colder. It would be quite tricky to make sure you don't freeze the HP heat exchanger, especially with a modulation boiler. Now the gain would be minimal and the complexity great, but a scientist will say it can be done. The engineer would probably say it shouldn't be done.

enjoy,
jerry

ScottMP

Honestly Ken

Theres a big difference between Viessmann as a company and Vallaint.

And as Tim says its all about the company standing behind the product.

Did Vallaint build new buildings in America to support its product ?

Scott

To Learn More About This Professional, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in "Find A Professional"

Ken_8

Oh really?

I recall hearing that Vallaint was twice the size of Viessmann and Buderus - COMBINED (not including Buderus' cast iron sewer grate and man-hole type subsidiaries.

In Frankfurt, ISH, their floor space was large enough to support that notion.

I believe the number I heard was that they sell 4 times as many boilers in Europe as V & B combined.

To Learn More About This Professional, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in "Find A Professional"

Unknown

Ken, you are correct

in fact I believe Vaillant is one of the largest if not the largest on the mainland of Europe. Here in the US if memory serves me they took over the Repco factory which I think was in NJ, I am sure you would know that.

They really did not put forth much of an effort here in the US and had thier share of problems.

One of the things we still have problems up here in RI is finding a replacement for the White Rodgers relays they used with "Pepi" switches for an auxillary high limit. We are replacing them with a Honeywell Relay with similar set up. They were used on "Powerpile" boilers.

Mark Eatherton1

I see...

I've installed both, and live with one in my own home. The Munchkin T-50 I have has not missed a beat since installation. Not to say that the product line in general is flawless, it's not. But the company standing behind the product is exemplary in my opinion. They've backed their product 100%, including my labor. Unlike the big V...

I like to offer the good, better and best catagories in my product line and let the consumer make the decision. Without a doubt, Vie$$mann is the top of the line, but not in everyones budget. And no, I don't expect the Munchkin to last as long as the Vie$$man, but in 10 to 15 years from now, I don't expect the technology to remain the same either.

What I'm basically getting at is just because you deal in one product, don't knock another product until you've tried it:-)


JMHonestO

ME

Mark Eatherton1

The blower motors...

are the same motors that Viessmann and all the other European manufacturers use. I know because a personal friend of mine if the manufacturers rep. He did say that they had a batch of bad shafts get out that were manufacturerd by a sub manufacturer of theirs. It happens... But shouldn't be reflected upon the component assembler, which is what HTP is. Did they cover your costs to repair?

ME

hr

Ever seen a cutaway of

A Lochinvar, Raypak, Laars, or RBI, header connection? You will notice a very similar tube to header attachment. Been that way for decades. Not sure that is a weak link.

Then again I can almost swing two Munchkins for the price of 1 V with all the "extras" needed.

I could install one and put the other in their storage closet for installation 15 years from now, should the first one fail

Be curious to know the number of Munchkins to Vitodens sold?

As always, ask the contractors what they, and their customers want, then provide it. Efficient, affordable condensors seem to be high on the "wish list" these days, judging by what I see posted here.

hot rod

To Learn More About This Professional, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in "Find A Professional"

ScottMP

The Repco plant

enough said.

To Learn More About This Professional, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in "Find A Professional"

hr

I just called Vaillant in NJ at 856-786-2000

more than happy to supply warranty parts, and help. I suspect some of their "issues" were PB era enhanced.

I spoke with Colin and he will help with a damper replacment, shipping TODAY for 4- GA 200 I still watch over in Arkansas.

They have replaced 2 HX blocks for me, by the way, for free, after 10 years of service.

Even though they pulled back from ther boiler market they still cheerfully handle warranty issues. Better than some major US companies that I recently had warranty issues with in Indiana!

hot rod

To Learn More About This Professional, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in "Find A Professional"

Unknown

Thanks Hot Rod,

I had called them in the past and did not have any luck on those relays. I will try them again today.

prm_8

>100% efficiency

Perhaps the BTU-in part of the equasion only counts for energy release from combustion, but the BTU-out part is being aided by energy from the phase change of condensation. This would make 100+% possible.