pressure release valve

Edna Hirsch

I have a hugh furnace that heats my water and base board hot water heat. I recently noticed a valve on a horizontal bar leaking so I had a plumber come out to the house to replace it( pressure reducer valve). On the same horizontal bar was another valve that he said was a pressure release valve. He said that because my furnace had a pressure release valve on the back of the furnace that he did not have to replacce the pressure release valve. What he did was take both away and only replace a pressure reducer valve. The diagram in the manual shows a pressure reducer valve and a feed water valve on this pipe.
Now I am worried that he is wrong and I do not want the pressure not to be able to escape if needed. What do you think?

Joe Mattiello

PRV required

You should have a pressure reducing valve to drop the pressure down from city pressure, to the system pressure. Your system needs to have an expansion tank for the thermally expanded water when the system heats up, because we know water expands when heated. Having said that, if the expansion tank fails, we need to relief the pressure in the system, so there has to be a safty valve installed. The pressure relief valve. Only one is required as long as it has capacity to relief so much water in a short period of time. For your reference I have attached the catalog data for the Taco PRV.

Taco, Inc.
Joe Mattiello
Technical Service Technician
joemat@taco-hvac.com
401-942-8000 X 484
www.taco-hvac.com

Al Letellier_11

pressure release

It sounds like you had an old style pressure reducer/ safety valve combination unit that is common with old boilers. If indeed you have a pressure relief valve on the boiler itself, there should be no need to install a second one at the PRV location. Without pictures, it sounds like, from you description, that your plumber did OK. If you are that uneasy about it, maybe someone from the FIND A PRO second would be willing to check it out for you. Good luck.