Is this Kosher?

S Ebels

With the customer. They asked me to meet with their building tech committee and go over some installation issues. If I can find out, I will glady let you know.

Thanks for caring about your product!!

S Ebels

I just ran into a large mechaical firm on a boiler bid that uses De Dietrich boilers on their jobs. The curveball part of their proposal was that they use a burner not provided (and probably not tested) by De Dietrich. I don't know the actual brand of the burner and it almost sounds like a "field fabricated" unit to me. Maybe built in house??

Anyhow, what are the testing criteria for approvals on burners and do they have to be "matched" to the boiler itself? How about UL listings? Do they look at whether a burner/boiler combo is tested as a unit or doesn't it make a difference?

Firedragon_4

The burner

must be 'Listed' by someone to be legal under the Building Codes. That's all burners, oil, gas, combos, even stokers, no, repeat NO exceptions.

First the dry part of the story.

With furnaces the burner must be a part of the listing and may not be substituted without written confirmation by both the furnace OEM and the burner OEM. And then there's wet.

Boilers and water heaters are essentially either ASME certified or some other, UL, ETL, etc.. That covers the water part. The burner is listed too, we covered that.

Now, the boiler or tank company has to have had done an application test and 'approved' the burner for their respective application. If you put a burner into a unit without the OEM's approval you own it.

If an OEM supplies you with an unlisted burner this will get sticky in court. You will go through hell, FACT! Good news is however they will eventually swing for the damages, but it's a long pull.

Let's say that the burner was supplied incorrectly by a wholesaler. Good grief, this is the worse scenario in court because it's like a divorce, he said, she said, they said, we said, I don't know :-)

Now, let's say the boiler is ASME, but it's out of warranty and needs to be retrofitted or converted. At that point as long as the burner is 'listed', go for it, the boiler OEM is off the hook and nobody really cares. Just make sure that you can prove that this is an 'accepted' conversion and don't sweat it.

Sorry to be so long, but Code issues ain't easy.

www.firedragonent.com

Mike Reavis_2

Is it approved my the mechanical engineer?

Mike

S Ebels

No clue

I have no idea what approvals or listings are on the burner. Their bid just says "burner" period. The outfit is large enough to have an in-house engineer if that tells you anything.

Jed_2

How can

a Mechanical Engineer "approve" a burner apllication independently from the Boiler Manufacturer?

Jed

Unknown

same way as the manufacturer

Pay CSA or UL or whatever listing agency is required to test and list his choice, and have it tested.

Otherwise, it would be "unlisted" in the NFPA code book, and in the other code books as well, I imagine.

Noel

Jed_2

How can

a Mechanical Engineer "approve" a burner apllication independently from the Boiler Manufacturer? I have run into this periodically on Smith boilers. Smith would take the position that; if the burner is not listed for the application, you own it.

Jed

oil-2-4-6-gas

i have a similar problem -with a Bock water heater--installer put in a Beckett heater approved burners are the Wayne and the Carlin the heater had problems from the beginning -not runnung right,going off on reset-turns out the burner air tube is too short among other things--the owner is getting the original installer to replace the burner with the correct 1 --i would talk to the contractor and find out what burner he proposes to install --make sure it is the correct or approved burner-if its not tell him he will not get paid --job is not complete if its not the correct equipment

Firedragon_4

Amen brother!

People keep shoving burners into equipment that's not approved and the lawyers will eat you alive, FACT!

Always, always, always check with the OEM FIRST, FACT!

Keith French

De Dietrich boiler burner issue

Gentlemen:

I would appreciate it if you could let me know what brand of burner is being used with the De Dietrich boiler. We are very careful in following strict procedures to ensure that only burners that are thoroughly tested by the manufacturer are approved and recommended for use in our boilers.
There may be the occasional renegade using an unapproved burner, obviously this occurs without our knowledge or approval and we do not recommend this practice at any time.

Thanks,

Keith French,
President MACNA / De Dietirch

Firedragon_4

Well, that

sure shows where this company is on that issue.

Well done, tres bien!

www.firedragonent.com