Amtrol Boilermate Recommendation?

It appears I have a solution to keep the DF-520 running in warmer weather so I want to add a boilermate to provide hot water for my lovely wife and her 55-80 gallon soaking tub that runs out of hot water before the DF-520 can get hot to keep up with the demand.

So any recommendations? The 80 Gallon WHS-80 BoilerMate Premier Series Indirect-Fired Water Heater looks like a good solution, but expensive. The TACO switch relay has one more zone I can use for the boilermate.

http://www.pexsupply.com/Amtrol-2775S50 ... ter-Heater



I currently have a tankless water heater installed in the DF-520. What do I do with this if I go to the boilermate? So I plumb it in with values so I can switch over to the tankless as a backup?

Is there a cheaper indirect-fired water heater that is good?

Thanks!

Dave

I was at the supply house and had selected a Wells-Mclain, then I realized with that suspended internal tank design it is litterally impossible to drain, for me this was unaceptable because somtimes when I'm out of town for two weeks in the winter, I want to drain my house. Other people may not be as concerned with that but in a prolonged power outage depending on your tank location you may someday want to drain the fresh water out.

I bought a Store-More, I am very pleased. I am a little concerned that the drain leaves some water in the tank down around the heating coils.

It is recomended on my unit to have 1" lines from the boiler. I had already installed the distribution manifold and 3/4" zone valves, but it works great, 30 gallons and I can run a large load of hot wash and at the end of the last spin cycle it has recovered. I also have no problem doing wash and showering.

Over 16 years ago we built this house and installed a 40 gallon Boilermate. No problems yet and plenty of hot water. I'm not sure that I'm in love with the new "electronic thermostat" on the new ones. I've heard of a few go bad. Mine has the old mechanical one & is still going strong.

I was just looking...it's cheaper to put in two 40's than one 80. Odd. Food for thought!

I'd bet $.50 that a 40 would supply all the water you need. They recover very fast. You might chase one cool with a giant tub and doing laundry, but taking a shower they will make water as fast as you use it. A couple of times we had people add giant tubs & want more water. Large families, doing more than just filling that one tub. Rather than shell out for a larger tank, we bumped up the tank temperature & added a mixing valve. It effectively gave them more storage.

What temperature and feed rate are you running the 520 at? Some people reduce the feed rate to keep the boiler from overheating when idle...which limits how much hot water the tankless can produce. With the proper feed rate and aquastat settings, your tankless coil should easily be able to handle that tub.

As for the indirect water heaters, do the math and see if a 60 gallon indirect would meet your needs...I bet it will. Like Yanche, I am a big fan of the Weil McLain or Triangle Tube tank within a tank indirect hot water heaters. I have a 30 gallon Weil McLain that has been running since 1992.

I reread your original post.

Problem is, sytem works good in the winter but in summer with boiler idiling the domestic hot water needs can suprisze the stoker boiler combination with load.

Possible solutions, that should cost much less than 1000$

1. Since you have an extra zone how about coneting that zone piping with no load on it, then putting a timer in that acts like a closed thermistat for say 10 minutes, now when large hot water demands are anticipated bump the timer to 10 minutes, now the boiler heats itself and the new no load zone, and can handle the DHW load, and in ten minutes if the load didn't happen all returns to normal.

2. Same plumbing as above except put a thermal well in this no load zone, now when hot water demands are anticipated push a button powering a thermal switch that closes keeping the zone valve open until the thermal well comes up to temp, warming the boiler and shutting down at set temperature even if the DHW load never happens.

3. If you are electrically inclined it looks like you could trick the Honywell control on the boiler and get the stoker to come on without the circulator, bringing it up to temp. Say for example a relay that closes the thermistat wires on one set of contacts and opens the circut for the circulation pump on another, this relay being energized with the timer from solution one. Now you would turn the timer when large hot water demands are anticipated, relay moves acting like a thermistat calling for heat, and prevents circulator from coming on, allowing the honywell control to bring the boiler up to temperature, and preventing circulation in heating system for the duration of the timer.

I like solution one for simplicity, and three if you like electrical solutions. All these ideas require anticipating the large domestic hot water load.

Thanks for your time, hope it proves productive.

Thanks! The Ultra Plus 80 Indirect Water Heater is half the price as the Boilermate. Anyone know the difference between the Gold and Ultra version of this indirect water heater?

Short Bus - I'm going to put in a microcontroller this summer so I have more control over the boiler. I have my wife turn on the heat 10 minutes before she takes a bath, but depending on how hot the temp is in the boiler and how cold the room is it may take longer to heat up than 10 minutes. I have to increase the coal rate now too since this might help heat up faster. Of course, turning on the heat in the summer will not work.

I thought with the microcontroller I could setup a wireless switch to start the boiler without demand for heat. I read somewhere on this forum about someone who installed a microcontroller. Have to search the forum again.

The indirect water heater should work fine too.

Thanks,

Dave

or use a 260 or 270 Teckmar single boiler control with DHW outputs

http://www.tekmarcontrols.com/media/literature/p447.pdf

Dave, what temperature does the EFM idle at? What are you using for a feedrate?

Dave, I don't think I've ever seen a price higher than that boilermate. WOW!!! It must be gold lined! All the indirects work very well, so pick your favorite. Triangle has a lifetime warranty, and McLain is also probably. When you go into someone's mechanical room and see an install date in the 70's, I gets your attention. We see electric water heater crao out two days after a 5 year warranty runs out, or a ten year unit...same thing. Up here we have Vaughn stone lined units and they are excellent, and one hell of a workout to get down a set of stairs. www.vaughncorp.com
Worth a look. I have two of them and won't outlive them, I'm sure. Triangle is huge up here also.

I have a Vaughn also and it was more reasonable than the name.

I bought my 41 gallon Boilermate at Lowe's back in '05 for around $800 with circulator, & plumbing supplies. Was the best thing I ever did for this place. No matter how hard we try, I have NEVER in 6 years EVER come close to running this thing out of hot water. 41 gallons is alot of water ... plus the recovery rate is phenomenal. I would think you'd only need 80 gallons for a family of 12, maybe.

The best thing about this is I can use it for an emergency dump zone if I misjudge the weather, & have my stove running hotter than it should (hot water coils inside). For example I came home the other day to a strange smell in the house ... like some type of food. It was the air vent blowing off whatever gas was boiling off inside the boiler ... which had hit 264° !! Woaaaaah!! Just dumped all that heat into the indirect. Temp only allows 150° on the digital controller, but with all that heat it overshot to 158°. Watch your fingers!

I'll check out the other recommendations, thanks! My efm is running around 180 idle. I just changed it to 4 teeth with 4 air to see if this will heat up faster. I was running it at 3/3.25. Since I added the AD-1 draft fan and blowing in fresh air the boiler now runs much cooler so I suspect more heat is going up the chimney.

How about feeding an electric 80 gal hot water heater with the output of the tankless from the efm?

This way if the efm goes out in the summer I will still have hot water for the wifey with her 80 gallon soaking tub. She doesn't like my efm since it doesn't heat her tub after she gets back from exercising. The electric heater would only come on to keep the tank hot. Anyone ever try using this approach?

Dave

Dave, you can hook up an electric water heater and circulate the water through the tankless coil. That would give you a lot of hot water for a reasonable cost.

As you have discovered, it takes a lot of btu's to get the full output of the tankless coil. There is also a lag if the stoker has been running on the timer all day. I tried running my EFM at 3 or 4 teeth, but my wife wasn't impressed with the hot water either. I now have it running at 6 teeth 5.5 air, and it recovers much faster.

On a different note, did you get your auger straightened out?

Rob - How do you circulate the water using the tankless on the EFM through the electric heater? There is water supply circulators on PEXSupply. How about the controls? Lowe's has a 80 gallon whirlpool electric heater for $530.

I patched the pipe, and received the new replacement. I started to work on it, but the weather got hot so I had to refocus on improving the draft to keep the boiler running in warm weather. However, it got cold again so need to keep it running to keep the house warm.