Under Stair Replacement Burnham Minute Man II

John R Leny

Thought I would throw this out their to the Pro's. I have a 4 year old Burnham MinuteMan II Boiler that is way oversized. The unit is extremley reliable (Has never been down yet) but the fan noise is driving my wife crazy. I have replaced the fan but the fan noise is still there. The unit makes heat and hot water. I want to leave the unit intact because it works very well but I can't take another day of my wife's complaints.

My question is this. What is a quiet 85% AFUE or better boiler. I have a Teledyne Laars EDP 175 upstairs in the other apartment but I was thinking more along the lines of a seperate boiler/Indirect tank setup. The Heat Loss Calc I did came out to be about 35,000.00 BTU.

Any recommendations. I have heard the munchkins are very quiet even at full fire. I have really gotten into this forum and though this would be the place to ask this question. It has to go under a staircase (Direct Vent) and is across from the living/family room. Three zones. It must heat a room 25X15, a garage that is 10X18 and a studio apartment that is 13X20.

Any help to at least narrow down my choices would be great. I was leaning towards the Burnham Revoloution or Spirt but heard the Fan noise is high also.

Joe Brix

Have you tried

enclosing the boiler since it's a direct vent? Shame to get rid of a perfectly good boiler. Probably oversized to generate enough DHW. I would see if I could enclose the boiler and insulate the walls and under the stairs first. Any fan induced direct vent is going to make some noise.

Unknown

John

Here is a tip to possibly correct the fan noise you may be hearing. Is the fan noise you hear from resonance through the vent pipe to the wall thimble or is it heard troughout the system? The blower assembly has 4 connection points where tabs go over studs that protrude from the canopy. There are washers and brass nuts that secure it to the canopy with a cerafelt gasket. What is important is that the nuts be snugged but not over-tightened. If they are over-tightened the mounting brackets will bend and end up digging into the metal canopy. Induced fans are not by any means perfectly balanced devices. We don't make the fans and don't neccessarily have control over their production or quality control. We do however have control over who we buy the fans from and we stay with the best.

If the fan is isolated from the metal canopy with the gasket, then this possible resonance is absorbed by the gasket and is not heard. One other tip is that on some models, the upper right mounting bracket does not get the gasket. I like to cut off a small 1" square piece of the excess gasket material on the left side and punch a small hole in it to use under the upper right bracket mount. This makes a tremendous difference. Hope this helps.

Glenn Stanton

Manager of Training

Burnham Hydronics

www.burnham.com