Install damage?

Mark_46

The boiler is being installed and is still far from operational.

I suspect the manifold was bent while tightening the attaching pipes. I too suspect it will leak.

Mark_46

Doesn't look right

For those who are familiar with Munchkins, please have a look at the attached pics. The angle on the inlet and outlet pipes looks wrong. Overzealous pipe wrench? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Mark_46

Pic 208

Sorry folks, picture 208 is of the right hand side of the Heat excahbe coil. It is not in question.

Darin Cook_2

Post a picture


of the piping above the supply and return connections if you can. If I had to guess, there is too much weight being supported by the Munchkin manifold. The only thing holding it in place is the steel strapping and it cannot support much weight. I can see from the picture that the manifold is spun....why it isn't leaking is a mystery to me.

Darin Cook

Marty

not the installer

I have one and the pipes were on pretty much the same angle. Its all the fault of Bill Gates ever since windows came out people seem to be willing to let more and more stuff slide. Having to install a pair of swing joints to make something look good shouldn't be needed.

Cosmo_3

okay

No agenda there!!

;-)



Cosmo Valavanis

gerry gill

same here..

i like the units but they are crooked for some reason..tho that one is alot..it is rather annoying..

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Kniggit

not the only one

I have one in our office, not that bad looking though, it came from the factory at a slight angle. I could see it when the elbow and the first nipple was installed, both connections at the same angle, it may be that they are having some problems with QC on some units, that appears to be a larger one so it would be the same cabinet I have. If its your install call the distributor you bought it from, if its not then let it go, mine didn't leak.

Ron Schroeder

I just hate it

when the piping on a new boiler is so crooked that you need to double 90 it to make it look like your not an idiot. Now I have yet to install a Munchkin but I have seen it on other brands

Weezbo

is this a before or after the sheet rockers?

just curious *~/:) lot of people pack ,hang ,walk ,stand on boiler piping and ta da! you got a real deal to contend with.....maybe heavy 36: wrench unlikely though...

Dave_4

The pressure vent on my Vitodens was none to straight either... for that kind of money I was expecting everything to be aligned. No leaks though.

marc

vitodens

try to straighten the vent by pushing slightly till straight, this is a common occurance with the Vitodens,
although this seems very trivial.

Marc

Dave_4

I didn't bother straightening it because you are correct, it is trivial... Nothing more than an esthetic issue.

hr

The HX in the Munchkin

sort of floats inside the plastic cabinet.

I heard another cause of F-09 codes may be the HX gets a little slope to the front and the condensate can collect there. Which turns to steam and fouls the prove rod.

I think it is important with any of these light weight mod cons that the boiler AND the piping be properly supported and assure the HXers pitch to the drain.

My supplier told me to jam a wood wedge under the sloped HX to get proper grade to the drain.

Sounds a little non- professional to me

hot rod

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[Deleted User]

The art of injection molding

has not been fine tuned, unfortunately.

Not trying to make excuses for the manufacturering process, but it has been my experience that the plastic boxes rarely come out square. Consequently, anything attached to it is crooked, and must be compensated with swing joints.

At least your guys had the common sense to use swing joints to straighten out the rest of the piping. I've been a recent witness to some crapsmanship where ALL the piping was crooked because the tappings weren't coming out of the box at perfect right angles, making the WHOLE job look like crap.

I will say one thing about HTP, and that is, if enough people complain about an issue, they WILL change their ways to accomodate the installers. Has been and probably always will be a modus operandi for Dave Davis and company.

ME

Terry Larsell

Every Munchkin is like that.

I've complained to the factory and I guess they haven't been listening. The last few I redrilled the cabinet to get it straight. I've had three units with the gas valves broke off from shipping. You can't just get them to send you the mounting plate and plastic venturi that bend and break when this happens. You have to go through warrenty and pay shipping both ways and even then you can't get the plate. The wholesaler told me to flatten it out.

I've been patient but I'm moving on to something else.

Terry

Rick Kelly_3

Munchkin quality issues

I'm with you Terry. After more than a dozen installs, I'm done with Munchkins. The quality is bad but the unreliability is intolerable. Although HTP has always made good on defective parts, I have this funny thing about wanting to get paid for my time. I don't build into my estimates the extra time for repair and diagnostics on a new boiler. I think we have only had two installs that didn't have some issue that required additional attention.
HTP knows they have a lot of work to do before their boiler has the reliability of their indirect tanks. Change will come slowly, too slow for me. Many of the complaints are the same ones of two years ago. The only changes I've seen are band-aids that I can do myself in the field more elegantly. Misaligned pipe nipples, leaking PRV fittings, fan failures, detached gas valves, and broken wiring connections are my pet peeves with these units. After having to pull a new wall hung T80M after wasting 50 hours of screwing around with the factory, my customer's confidence level was below zero. It took a year for them to stop calling me for every click, tick, and burp they heard in their house. Another issue to keep in mind is that there are products out there that contain much of the necessary piping and accessories already included. Taking that into account makes the Munchkin a poor choice.

ScottMP

Mark

You have a knack for coining phrases .... Crapmanship !!

I love it

Scott

PS: I don;t see any excuse for Any Boler to have poor tappings. It puts crapmanship right back at the manufacuter.

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Constantin

Allow me to quibble...

... the issue is not with injection molding (IJM)... the tolerances of which can be held to standards we just shake our heads at.

... IRRC, Munchkins cabinets are rotomolded, which is a very different process. For one, it is a MUCH less expensive proccess than injection molding, and it also requires much less sophisticated jigs, machinery, etc. Doing the cabinet on a Munchkin with an injection-molding rig would probably require a 750 ton-capable injection molding rig, and two 6-figure dies (if not more). But you'd get superior surface finishes and relatively fast cycle times in return (depends on the wall thickness).

The tolerances of making a Munchkin cabinet via injection molding would be impressive, and it would also afford you the opportunity to pre-position all bolt-hole flanges, etc. in the die ahead of time, minimizing follow-on operations almost entirely. That consistency would translate into Munchkins always going together the same, no droop, etc.

However, even injection-molded parts can suffer from warping due to incorrect part design. The trick with making parts from plastic (regardless of what process you use) is to keep all the plastic cross-sections of the same thickness, that way none of them shrink more than the others, thus allowing the sections to stay true to each other.

The rotomolding process that I heard referenced at HTP cannot hold as tight tolerances as IJM, but it is also much less expensive to implement than injection molding for large parts. You can read more about Rotomolding here. Instead of shooting a pre-measured amount of hot plastic into a heavy die at high pressure as with injection molding, rotomolding dies have plastic pellets put into them that expand when the mold is heated. It's a lower-throughput process that is better suited to the low-volume, large-part end of the biz, which at the time probably suited HTP just fine.

These days, I wouldn't be surprised if their engineering team is considering a new cabinet made with a different process. But it all depends on what return on investment such a move would entail, something only they would know.