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HOW MUCH CONDENSATE???

Magnehelic
Magnehelic Member Posts: 63
Hi......on pins and needles here.  I have to have my proposal done by the end of the day for replacing 44 furnaces in a school (I already got the job.....but the spec has been modified.)  I cannot get the vendor, the tech assistance guy, OR the factory to tell me the maximum amount of condensate that can be expected from a 120,000btuh modulating 95% furnace.  The engineer is waiting for me to answer him about this, because we are considering using mini pumps inside the furnaces due to a horrible lack of clearance on may that are in the ceiling, and he needs to do the review drawings ASAP.  Can anyone answer this question?  The make and model should not be important.......it should be the same for any of the same type of furnace.  Takers????

Comments

  • Tim McElwain
    Tim McElwain Member Posts: 4,612
    At full firing rate

    of say 100,000 BTU's per hour you produce about a gallon of water. If you calcualte at 50% of heating load about half of that typically with a 20 to 30 degree day.
  • Magnehelic
    Magnehelic Member Posts: 63
    Tim........could it ever be more than that?

    I found on HVAC-Talk that the "theoretical maximum" would be about 1.2 GPH.......and told the engineer that.......but have no "substance" to back up my claim with.

    The mini pumps will do 1.3 GPH @13' lift.........I need to be damn sure that they will do the job.......as it is another one of MY hair-brained ideas.



    Thanks



    Don
  • Tim McElwain
    Tim McElwain Member Posts: 4,612
    Over the past

    six or seven years I have been involved with testing (informal) the amount of condensate collected in one hour on about 20 different pieces of equipment. 12 were boilers the others 90 plus furnaces. We actually collected it in a measuring device. The average collected calculated over one hour periods was 1 gallon at around 100,000 BTU's down to 80,000 BTU's.



    It was dependent upon outside air humidity but on an average it was 1 gallon. At the maximum we had on three occasions with boilers only about 1.5 gallons.



    The fact that equipment will not be running for a full hour at a time and with modulation you will have much less than 1 gallon about 95% of the time.
  • Magnehelic
    Magnehelic Member Posts: 63
    Tim......

    Was this testing done to prove efficiency?  or was it for actually dtermining an amount of condensate?
  • Tim McElwain
    Tim McElwain Member Posts: 4,612
    Don this was done in conjunction

    with combustion testing and analysis being done on some targeted projects I had agreed to look at to do some comparison to previous heating systems. All of these were replacement furnaces and boilers in the RI, MASS and CT area.
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