Burnham hydronic boiler

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Sounds like the radiant is seperated from the boiler water via the SuperStor indirect tank?If so how is the pressure maintained in the radiant side?

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Norvit

Burnham hydronic boiler

This is a long one and need some help.

New house ranch main floor 3900 sq feet, basement 4000 sq feet, garage 1200 square feet. All with radiant heated by propane gas using Burnham Series 2 hydronic boiler. I live in metro new york and have just moved into new house in mid oct and have gone thru over 3200.00 in propane. (Average temps until this week have been high sixties)Radiant was run in basement for one week and turned off and temp has been holding at 67 degrees. radiant is off in garage and in main house we keep bedrooms at 63 degrees bathrooms at 65 degrees other living areas between 60 and 65 degrees depending on use. (very conservative) We get as lot of radiant heat during the day and room temps can go as high as 70 degrees from sun alone. The boiler runs constantly. No leaks in propane tank or lines, propane regulator has been changed at house, radiant system has checked out fine. Plumber has yet to get back to me. My question is can it be the boiler. Can the boiler be bringing in fuel and not burning it all off and it just getting wasted?? Can it be the regulator on the boiler?? Any ideas?? HELP!! Thanks.

Brad White_155

What size

Burnham Series 2? Nameplate, number of sections such as "-206" for a 6-section boiler?

How is radiant-side water controlled? (P/S with mixing valve? Manifolds with circulators? Injection? Or just on-off without water temperature control?)

Your domestic hot water- deluge showers, hot tub, any unusual hot water requirements?

Do you have outdoor reset? Is the domestic water off the boiler and how is it controlled? (e.g.: boiler kept hot for DHW use versus using an indirect?)

Might you have snow melting (running wild) in addition to your other zones? (Snookums the Cat sleeping on pavement is a clue.)

Forgetting cost of propane (as if you could), putting dollars per gallon aside, how many gallons have you used?

This is all new construction but did you supervise the basics such as insulation, air barriers and the like? Just trying to get my arms around it.

You are right, with all of that passive solar gain and that the house basement seems to hold without much input, and with just the main house using heat, it is a bit of concern.

Without calculating a heat loss or knowing how much glass you have, it is just a guess, but here goes in rough numbers:

House at 3,900 SF at conservatively 32 BTUH per SF = 125,000

Basement at 4,000 SF at 8 BTUH per SF = 32,000 (not used now agreed.)

Garage at 1200 SF at 20 BTUH per SF = 24,000 (also now dormant.)

I get 181,000 for a ballpark heat loss. A Burnham 207 or 208 would seem in range, with DOE outputs of 163 and 191 MBH respectively. (How close am I?)

Even if grossly oversized to the largest Series 2 (244 MBH DOE output/299 MBH input) that is not severe enough for cycle inefficiencies to be that far off.

If your propane cost is, say $2.10 per gallon and you are in Metro NY with say, 5200 degree days and your system runs at 80% efficiency, I would expect your cost for a full year of "heating only" to be about $7,100. (Adjust accordingly to your actual propane net cost.)

If to between October and today we incurred, say, 1,000 Degree Days, (SWAG), your cost at that price per gallon would be about $1,840 heating only.

Thus, I can see your concern.

No solutions just yet, but a benchmark as to the magnitude of what you might expect to be using.

Unknown

RE: Burnham Boiler

As Brad has already indicated so well, there could be any number of factors contributing to what you are experiencing, most of which have nothing to do at all with the boiler itself. You will need to have someone take a real close objective look at this system, how it is installed, how it is controlled and how it operates. Above and beyond that would be a heat loss survey and load comparison to the output of the boiler in comparison to system demand. First instincts are to blame the boiler when in fact it may have nothing to do with it at all. Hope this helps.

Glenn Stanton

Manager of Training

Burnham Hydronics

U.S. Boiler Co., Inc.

tim smith

High energy cost

Wow, seems very very high. Do you have recirc. pump on domestic. I see that causing boiler to run more than it should especially in a sprawling ranch house. This would not account for all of it but maybe some. Also maybe some ghost flow in circuits eating some btus. Think you might also want to consider a high efficiency boiler for this house to reduce some of the energy use also. Pics of boiler room posted would be good along with info from builder. ? under slab and permiter insulation etc. Tim

Norvit

Burnham Hydronic Boiler

Hi Brad thanks for getting back to me.

Answers in order of your questions.

207PILT-TE12

Radiant side water is controlled with Taco radiant mixing valves RMB-1

Domestic hot water is with 3 indirect HWH superstores each one is its own zone off of boiler 2 80 gallon for domestic and 1 60 gallon for radiant

Yes we have an outdoor reset, in regards to domestic water see above.

We are set-up for snow melt but will not be installed until Spring 2007.

As for gallons of propane since Oct 3 thru today 1,410 gallons. (We have 100% definelty ruled out any leaks in propane tanks and lines)

All insulation was inspected by us during construction and by building department for final b4 sheetrock.

We have a consultant doing a load calculation and should have an answer this week.

We have a recirculation pump installed but is not active.
Will go online with it this week. Are having radiant tech out again this week. What still confuses me is that even when thermostats in individual rooms have reached and even surpassed there target temps during the day with sunlight the system is still calling for heat for those rooms.

I will send pics later this week once I get camera out of storage.

Thanks for the help it just keeps getting more baffling.

Norvit

Burnham Hydronic Boiler

Hi Glenn,

The boiler is actually the last avenue that we are looking at, grasping at straws if you will. We have ruled out propane and have ruled out radiant problems, that left us with the boiler. I have the radiant specialist coming back out this week incase they overlooked something and now that we are living here we have a consultant re-running load calculations this week.

Fingers crossed

Norvit

Yes we have re-circ pump and they are coming to wire it up on tuesday. wE are also looking into ghost flow.

thanks for the help.

Brad White_156

More thoughts...

Going back to my first posting thoughts and with what you provided, I was guessing about 875-900 gallons for the period versus your over 1,400 gallons, over 60% more.

The awaited heat loss will help but until then, I am thinking in terms of hidden heat loss. Given the presumed integrity of the envelope insulation, the biggest wildcard would be infiltration (uncontrolled air leakage).

Do you have gas log stoves in any fireplaces? Reason I ask is, I designed an HVAC system in 1997-98 and during occupancy they could not maintain humidity levels. One design change made unbeknownst to me was the addition of natural gas logs in the fireplace. This required that the fireplace dampers be welded open by code here in MA.

Prior to this revelation, I back-calculated that there was about 3,000 cfm of additional infiltration to absorb that humidity. I used a flow hood on the fireplace and it was drawing 2,800 CFM...

My point being, a single open fireplace (just an open damper gas log or not) may be sucking a lot of dollars up into space. Just have to ask...

Brad

Norvit

Yes we have 2 gas fireplaces and one wood burning. Not sure if it is required to have damper be welded open. Fingers crossed that they can figure out something tomorrow.