Strange condensate piping

Henry · January 2015

I went to see a problem and found many problems in a very expensive old condo. It used to be a vacuum system. Some brain removed the vacuum system and installed a regular condensate tank with pumps. There are two 3.5 milliopn BTU Burnham boilers controlled by a Tekmar single stage controller with several relays, outdor aditional outdoor temperature sensor so when it gets beowo -14C, both boiler function. The brain replaced the F&T trap on the headder with a a thermostatic one and created a water leg. He also did this at two other locations in the garage.

vaporvac · January 2015

I guess it would bee too much work to return it to a vacuum system? What gets into people?

SWEI · January 2015

Off topic perhaps, but what the heck is that grey PVC hairball in photo #2?

RobG · January 2015

SWEI said:
Off topic perhaps, but what the heck is that grey PVC hairball in photo #2?

Great question! It appears to go into something made exclusively of Fernco and No-hub couplings with a CPVC trap?

Henry · January 2015

I was not looking at the PVC DWV piping. My first reaction was to check out the strange water legs and the use of thermostatic steam traps. The header requires 880 # per hour steam trap at 2 PSI, while the thermostatic trap can only provide 220 #. Both the water leg and trap cannot eliminate CO2 or upon steam production, air. Therefore, the numbnut has created a large water hammer. Notice also in the last picture, he lowered the return line causing now a wet return blocking off air and try's to use a water leg to get the condensate into the gravity return while using a trap to eliminate air. A tiny bit of knowledge can be a very detrimental and expensive experience. This will end up in court.

Strange condensate piping

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