A question about Circulators on Packaged Boilers

DanHolohan

is it still practical to have a circulator arrive mounted on a packaged boiler?

Your thoughts?

Unknown

At Slant/Fin, we leave it to the installer

We offer the boilers without circulator, or with, and the pump is wired and bolted to the pallet. There is cable enough to install it on the supply or the return.

The return tapping has pipe threads AND bolt holes to fit a flange.

The choice is all yours.

Noel

Weezbo

Thats true Noel, i like slant fins:) ... The questions crossed everyones mind at least once though.:) The other question is "where are the bolts?" in a bag ina box in the flue ways in the fire box :)i sorta also like the idea of putting pumps together like triangle tube the pump goes Thata Way--->

Steve Minnich_1

dump the pump

I always order my boilers less the pump.

Steve

Unknown

Dan, I ask that question

in every class I teach. The consensus of opinion is get rid of the pump. In this area Low Water Cutoffs are required on every install. The folks up here would rather see them send a LWCO with the package.

DanHolohan

What an excellent idea.

Thanks, Tim.

Unknown

It can be made available

Most boilers still go to states that don't require them.

The Low Water Cut Off goes in the piping and wiring above the boiler, so after the first installation, they won't be changed every time (though they probably should be).

They wouldn't be mounted or wired, as they are part of the system, not part of the boiler.

I think most would rather select their own favorite model, due to replacement availability and service ease.

It sure is as easy to include a LWCO as it is a circulator or an oil burner. We offer Hydrolevel and M&M.

Have it your way....

Noel

R. Kalia

expansion tank

The MZ wall-hung boiler comes packaged with a pump AND expansion tank. The boiler is oversized for our house, but the pump and tank are both undersized. The tank is undersized by a factor of 4 or so (converted gravity system). So there's really no point.

DanHolohan

Good point about most wanting to

select their own brand of LWCO. Couldn't we say the same for circulators?

techheat_2

I find

8 out 10 need to be disassembled to get into basement anyway,so I just buy knockdown. For gas boilers it should just be eliminated and let the installer decide what type and where pump should be mounted

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

Unknown

Yes

And it's the reason why we offer several sizes of three different brands of circulators to everyone that orders boilers.

The Liberty boiler alone offers ten choices in the circulator column, including "no circulator".

There are 4 burner choices, plus "no burner".

We would like to offer what you would like to buy.

Tell your wholesaler your preferences....

Noel

kevin coppinger_4

I'm with that!

I would take that a trade off! I usually don't use the pump that comes w/ the boiler untill I get a few of them that will match up for one job...kpc

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

DanHolohan

Choice is great,

but I'll bet the wholesalers don't want to stock such a wide variety at their places. If they get a lot of different input from their contractor customers my guess is that they'll settle on one choice so as to not tie up too much money in stock.

Love to hear their thoughts on this.

Unknown

Absolutely!

Wholesalers choose. Contractors need to have their voices heard, if anything is going to change.

Noel

DanHolohan

What I meant was

that with 10 choices on just one boiler, and so many contractors having different preferences, the wholesaler is probably going to choose one and let it go at that.

Unknown

I agree

What was the question, again? (grin)

If it makes sense for a wholesaler to stock them with no circulator, and a LWCO, the system is already in place for that to happen.

To me, the question is, "What is preferred by the customer?"

THAT would be what I want to make and sell. I hope that is what I'm doing presently. I certainly am willing to listen, learn, and try to improve.

Noel

Robert O'Connor_3

My vote

I, for one, don't see any need for a circulator packaged with boilers in the current system design environment. Maybe Dan, et al, can relate the original justification for it historically. Maybe return side flow, zone valves, the "packaging people". Well my employer stocks two lines of circulators, based on Contractor demand. System design defines the system components. For example; Smith 8 Series 5 and 6 section boilers come packaged, whether knock down or packaged, with 0010 Taco's.When I asked the factory why, the response was:" I don't know, we've just always done it". What for? Are they trying to tell us that those size boilers require that flow. We don't know that? My Customers call and say :"What am I going to do with that thing?"

The "local" Market will decide what circs to stock.

JMHO

Jed

Biasi, and Vega previously, never cluttered the cost of the boiler with a circulator.

DanHolohan

When we at Burnham during Wetstock

one of the Burnham guys said that gas guys didn't care where the circulator was mounted, but that oil guys insisted that it be on the boiler, and on the return side, pumping toward the compression tank. I think this was a result of a meeting with a focus group.

Is this true of the guys you know?

Jim Erhardt

Is this true of the guys you know?

It certainly wasn't for me back in my wrenching days! Maybe gas guys are smarter than oil guys?

Robert O'Connor_3

maybe

you need to do a "Pumping Away" seminar for those old dawgs, Dan.

Jed

Robert O'Connor_3

Dan

I'm curious about this focus group. What was that? What does that mean? Was it during the Burhnam Tour? Please tell us more.

Jed

DanHolohan

No, not during our tour.

A focus group is something a manufacturer will use to feel the pulse of the industry. Simply put, they invite a group of people to sit in a room and they ask questions of those people. Often, they'll use a facilitator who doesn't work for the company, so the folks in the group don't know who's sponsoring the meeting. I have no idea who was at this focus group, or where they were from.

Robert O'Connor_3

More questions

Dan. So, would you say that the industry, as a whole, is embracing your continuance of Gil's sound principles? Or, was this focus group localised, and "the way way we always do it", types? Better than 80% of my Customers now understand, and employ.

Jed

DanHolohan

I think that most

have realized that it makes sense to pump away, and that it's to the contractor's and homeowner's advantage.

The question came up at Burnham when one of the contractors on our tour made a comment about the circulator being mounted on the return side of the Burnham boiler we were looking at. I had written an article for Supply House Times magazine a few months before our visit in which I suggested that wholesalers would be better off ordering knock-down boilers, and for a bunch of reasons. The Burnham guy had read that article and kidded me about it at that point in our tour. I suggested, once again, that I thought it would be best left off the boiler. That's when he mentioned the focus group. I commented that it was probably still there because the boiler manufacturer makes a nice buck on that packaged pump. He smiled and said that while that is true, they were just giving the trade what it wanted. I don't know where the focus group came from.

DanHolohan

Here's the Supply House Times article

Buy Your Own Circulators

A modest proposal for you. It seems to me that hydronics has evolved to a point where the circulator that comes mounted on the packaged boiler should quietly disappear. There was a time for this, but that time has passed. Here’s a list of reasons why.

The colors may not match. The boilers you order come with, say, Grundfos circulators, but the contractor who bought that last boiler prefers to use Taco, or B&G, or Armstrong, or whatever. He’s zoning with circulators and now the colors don’t match. There’s a mix of red and green and salmon, or if the boiler manufacturer uses their own paint for the packaged circulators (and most do), you can add in blue and black and pretty soon the job is looking like a bag of jellybeans.

I was once at a wholesaler’s counter when a contractor walked in with a bearing assembly from a B&G Series 100 circulator that had come off a packaged Weil-McLain boiler. The bearing assembly was painted blue. “We’ve only got the red ones,” the counterman said. “Ah, nuts!” the contractor said, and he walked out the door.

Appearance matters to contractors who take pride in their work. Why not sell them the circulators they prefer?

It limits your buying power. Add up the number of packaged boilers you buy in a year. If each has a circulator on it, that’s one less circulator that you’re buying from the rep that sells you your circulators. Don’t you have more leverage on price when your orders are large? Why let the boiler manufacturer take that leverage away from you?

There can be return goods challenges. Unless you demand that your boilers arrive with a certain brand of circulators, you’re liable to have return goods challenges, should the packaged boiler circulator come back to you as defective goods. If you stock, say, B&G and Grundfos, and the boilers come with Taco, you now have to call a rep that is not your main circulator supplier. And switch the names around as you will; I’m not favoring one guy over another here. My point is that you generally have more pull with the guy from whom you buy a lot of product. Right?

New Hydronics contractors uses circulators in a different way. With radiant heat in the mix, more and more contractors are using primary/secondary pumping techniques, along with two-, three- and four-way valves, as well as injection pumping. If they buy a packaged boiler with a mounted circulator, chances are the first thing they’re going to do is remove that circulator and put it somewhere else on the system because it’s either in the wrong place, or it’s the wrong size. The contractor may just put the circulator into stock, or he may try to return it to you (especially if it’s the wrong color). All of this adds up to extra work for the contractor, and for you, so my guess is these New Hydronics contractors are going to be asking you for boilers without the circulators as time goes buy. The price is better to them, and it saves both time and effort.

So what are you going to do? Stock some boilers with circulators, and others without circulators? Doesn’t it make more sense to order all your boilers without the circulators, and then sell the circulators separately?

One size doesn’t fit all. I looked at a problem job where the contractor installed a big boiler in the basement of an even bigger home here on Long Island. He used the circulator that came standard with the packaged boiler, and connected it to 15 Honeywell zone valves. The contractor’s complaint was that on a cold day, when most of the zones called for heat, the place didn’t come up to temperature. The circulator was too small, but the contractor was blind to this because the circulator came with the boiler. He figured it must be right because it came with the boiler. It wasn’t.

You may be holding the bag. Or at least part of it. If the circulator is the wrong size for the system, and the contractor is not technically sharp enough to see that, he’s probably going to come back and complain to you that the boiler you sold him isn’t getting the job done. You may make a trip to the job to check it out, or at the very least, a phone call or two to the boiler manufacturer to see if they can help. Wasted time for you.

The boiler manufacturer may have the circulator in the wrong place. Ten years ago, I wrote a book I called, Pumping Away. I did my best to explain, in plain English, that if a contractor sets up a closed hydronic system with the circulator pumping away from the compression tank then that contractor will never have to bleed the radiators. That book sold like hotcakes (and still does) because there’s something in it for the contractors. Nowadays, most savvy contractors install their hydronic systems with the circulators on the supply side of the boiler, pumping away from the compression tank.

Boiler manufacturers have responded to contactors’ “pumping away” feedback in curious ways. Some manufacturers continued to put the circulator on the return side of the boiler, saying that it didn’t matter where the circulator was on a small system (that’s the Packaging Department trying to defy the laws of physics). Others mounted the circulator on the supply side of the boiler, pumping directly at the diaphragm tank (which means they just didn’t get it). Others provided the circulator with a long cable so the contractor could put it wherever he wanted to put it (a diplomatic gesture). Still others just put the circulator in the carton as a loose component, which makes you wonder why they’re bothering at all at that point. The circulator they sell the contractor (at a ridiculous margin) is the circulator you don’t sell the contractor.

The only people who will object to all of this will be the circulator manufacturers, of course. They want to get their pumps on those boilers so that they can sell replacements as the years go by. Contractors often replace like with like and that ensures good business for the circulator manufacturers down the road. Circulator manufacturers know this, but contractors who pipe boilers will always need circulators, so there’s really no loss for those guys. Heck, the circulator guys will probably wind up making more money because they’ll no longer have to practically give away the razors to sell the blades.

Give it some thought. It makes more sense to order your boilers without the circulators nowadays. It really does.

JaredM_3

I was on the Burnham tour

and I brought up the subject with the fellow that was with us. Dan is correct. That is exactly what he said. For a while Burnham left the circulator un mounted on the oil boilers and returned to mounting them on the return due to feedback from their customer focus groups.

Timmie's idea to have a LWCO is a really good one. And perhaps the manufacturer could design a tapping just for that device, perhaps it could even be inside the jacket on the gas boilers! At a minimum we could have a tapping meant for the LWCO and not have to provide a tee and bushing and the field wiring required.

Perhaps if the boiler manufacturer's had to waste their time explaining to an electrician how to wire a LWCO as many times as we do they would consider such a thing. Until then, we will wire the boiler ourselves and explain to the electricians, as diplomatically as possible, why we have to do their work.

-Jared

DanHolohan

Thanks for the memory help.

I can use all the help I can get these days. ;-)

There's really no reason why a hot water boiler LWCO has to be mounted in the piping. I think the only reason it's there is because there's no tapping in the boiler for it.

Great food for thought. Thanks, Tim!

leo g_13

My local boiler manufacturer

offers a package that includes:

grundfoss circ, painted in their colour

watts expansion tank, with their name on it

watts air purger

watts 1/2 prv

and their famous custom cast iron pump adapter, that I am sure godzilla wrenches the sucker on for them.

of course the circ is mounted on the return.

we buy the non-package boilers and save some serious doe!

Leo G

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

Unknown

Let me clarify

for everyone our stance on circulators on our boilers. We did in fact remove the pump from all of our boilers several years ago and instead supplied it in its original box with flanges and a longer wire lead for pumping away. At that point in time, we began to get feedback regarding this change from the oil side of the business....primarily some of our larger national accounts. At that point in time, the pump was left on the cast iron oil boiler and on the return for crating reasons. All of the other boilers are still shipped with the pump not mounted.

The focus groups are pramarily Round Table discussions that we hold from time to time with some of the top people in the industry to discuss trends and practices. We too offer multiple shipping choices regarding pumps and other equipment. The decision of what the distributors choose to buy with the boiler is completely theirs. Ron and I also discuss "pumping away" in most of our seminars and show photos of actual installations with pressure readings. For those that choose to leave the pump on the return side of the oil boiler, we offer an alternative piping method in the I&O manual showing the tank and air elimination device moved to the return side of the system. Hope this helps.

Glenn Stanton

Unknown

Pumping Away &

circulators on the boiler. Some boilers have a built in circulator like the Laars Endurance which can handle the internal pumping and some limited zones with the one circulator.

The Weil-McLain Gold gas boiler has two circulators inside the unit one for system the other is a bypass.

There are others that have an internal ciculator which also can function as the primary pump for primary/secondary.

In many of my Hydronic Controls classes I introduce Pumping Away as a better way to go. Many of my students have never heard of it. It is a good thing I have a display table with Dan's book to help introduce many of them to pumping away as a solution to their problems. I have actually had them tell me that the boiler they purchased came with the pump mounted on the supply and they moved it to the return because they thought it was put there for shipping only.

My mentor back in 1966 introuduced all of us at the gas company to putting the pump on the supply as a better way to go. He did not describe it as "pumping away" he simply called it a better way. I have stated in past posts that when I looked up some of my old notes my mentor had given us I found a reference to "Gil Carlson" small world isn't it.

jerry scharf_2

focus groups and other marketing tools

Been there, done that, have the T-shirt.

You can pretty much get a focus group to come up with what you want if you are either careless or manipulative with the questions. It's much harder to come up with questions that actually get at the broader trends and future direction in a useful way. This is partly because people are often unclear about their purchasing reasons. We all want to believe our purchasing decisions are based in rational behavior, when this is often less than accurate.

I've watched a successful marketing machine up close, and it's both awesome and frightening.

jerry

Don_44

As a wholesaler

I can tell you that the less options mean less space, fewer mistakes and fewer sku's to maintain. I am glad I do not live in a package boiler market. To stock one boiler in five or six configurations is very difficult and is not cost efficient. You need enough inventory on each sku to handle sales spikes, inventory inaccuricies etc... We sell 90% knockdown boilers and let the contractor decide what pump, burner and control he wants for that boiler. Our package boilers typically come with a Taco 007, although it does not match the color of the aftermarket pumps, and we give the contractor the option to pick the unmounted burner of their choice.

DanHolohan

Thanks, Glenn.

Do you think the majority of the contractors in the U.S. still want the circulator to be part of the boiler package? That's really what I'm trying to get a sense of. Thanks.

hr

Another plus of \"no pump for you\"

in addition to being able to chose your brand, color, features, and correct size (a big plus in my mind) is you get FRESH pumps with recent date codes! Everytime!

Not unusual for cast, or any boiler, in my area to sit on the shelf for months, or years! in the case of unusual sizes or venting configurations.

Good chance you will get a boiler with a pump serial number out of warranty.

Worse case a stuck pump from extended storage periods.

Try getting warranty on a new, out of date pump, from a boiler rep that handles a competitors brand of pump!

Generally the rep bites the bullet and sends "their brand" as the replacement anyways.

MANUFACTURES, thanks, but keep the pumps! Give us more, thicker insulation or nicer sheetmetal instead.

Pick up a HVAC mag and take a look at the sheet metal on furnaces these days!

Boiler jackets are 20 years behind the times with your neanderthal look Burnham Revolution boiler excepted

Homeowners and contractors alike enjoy good looking at nice product. (A big Viessman plus, by the way)

Hell, maybe they will even ship and crate better. I rarely get a boiler without a dented of scratched jacket. Just a thought.

hot rod

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

DanHolohan

Great points, well made.

And considering that the pump manufacturers practically give these pumps away in hopes that contractors will replace like with like down the road (which isn't what you guys said in an earlier thread), it seems to me that the only ones who benefit are the boiler manufacturers.

I really like the LWCO idea in lieu of the circulator.

P.S. "No Pumps for You!" is a wonderful title. Thanks.

Unknown

I think

that the majority of the folks that monitor this site and others are aware that the pump that the manufacturer supplies is probably not the size needed for what they may be doing in the field. But the majority of the installers out there are probably not here or at other web sites. You and I meet those folks at seminars all of the time. I tend to agree that shipping the boiler less the pump may be a better way, but I guarantee that negative responses will always be incurred as a result of doing so.

The input we received when we simply removed the pumps (but supplied them) on our oil-fired boilers was somewhat overwhelming. They were concerned about the hundreds of jobs that they had already quoted that would require a bit more labor time to pipe, install and wire the circulator. We take pride in listening to the needs of the trade and respond frequently to those needs.

I believe that if the manufacturer could methodically get the word out to both the distributor and the trade over a period of time, say 6 months or so, that the pumps would no longer be supplied with the boiler, then it may work. The key is.....Over Time. If this is done right away a lot of contractors would get caught without the pump on the job and some negative feelings to boot!

Many installers, as you know, do not neccessarily know how to properly size a pump for a job. many still believe that the pump the boiler manufacturer supplies is the "Universal" circulator and can handle any task. Evidence of this is the job I had an opportunity to frequent with 13 Taco zone valves, one Taco 110 pump and a 1" manifold. Why was I there? The thirteenth zone had just been added and was a 60 gallon indirect that wasn't performing too well. We have always shipped our Revolution and Opus Oil-fired boilers less the pump. The internal circulator blending circulator is there but no system pump. I can't count the number of times that we have received calls from the field where the boiler was running but the house was not heating because the installer thought the blending pump was the system pump and didn't install one. Even though this was clearly covered in the Installation Manual.

We all have a LOT of work to do in educating the trade. You have done a marvelous job of this and the skill levels of your following both here and in the field certainly shows that! I think that over time things can change and I picture in the future a packaged boiler with no pump in the crate. But reality dictates that it is going to take some time.

Glenn

DanHolohan

I'm with you, Glenn.

I think it's something really worth working toward because it will lead to better-educated installers who look more closely at flow and system balance, and that can only be good for the profession. I promise to help get the word out there. Thanks.

Robert O'Connor_6

Well on the oil side

of things they can keep the pump too. I usually use the ones that I get with the boiler for service. On a new install I like to have them properly sized and matching colors. OEM Circs are painted.

I install LWCO on every job code requires it. The Safeguard OEM 170 has been extermely reliable . I wouldn't considder using anything else. So they can keep that too.

Regards

Robert

ME

hr

Skip the LWCs also

UNLESS they are M&M Guard Dogs. I have a feeling the manufactures would shop the LWC down to the cheapest one possible Like those hunka junka relief valves. The ones that pop off at 5-8 lbs below what they are rated for. Never to seal again, and end up in the scrap barrel. Great use of resources there!

Same with relief valves. Send M&M relief valves. Never a dog in the bunch with that brand.

Keep the pump, keep the pricing, and upgrade the relief valve, insulation, (I'm not brand specfic with insulation) and upgrade the "look"

It a chicken or the egg thing. Which came first? Do we get cheep because the bottom price contractors, and maybe utility "give a ways", demand it. Or are we contractors used to getting what the manufacture sends to keep their margins up?

If all the manufactures of boilers in the US upgraded components and the price went up 20-50 bucks would nobody buy boilers anymore. I think not.

How many of us have stopped driving as the fuel prices doubled.

Bad business practice to build your product line around the low ball whinners. IMO



Hense the shift to Viessys, Buds, De D and other quailty built and looking brands. These realitively unknowns come to the US with a MORE EXPENSIVE product and take chunks of market share. HELLO

Maybe the US manufactures could offer a bottom line and an up sell line. Too much retooling and work? Then private label some of the quality imports Seems like that is the direction for condensing equipment anyways.

hot rod

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

todd s

lwco's

I too would rather see a lwco on the boiler than a pump. We have to undo every packaged boiler and repipe and rewire it anyway. Steam boilers come with a lwco why can't hot water? We do 98% oil fired equipment and the only time we leave the pump on the return is in a chop&swap emergency replacment.

DanHolohan

Glenn,

was the oil dealer Petro? Just curious.