Aquastat Overkill?

Jrhughes wrote:

StokerDon wrote:Is the stoker running constantly now? What boiler temp is it maintaining?

I noticed that in your profile it says "steam". You didn't add the Keystoker onto a steam system did you? Not that it wouldn't work but, unless you know a lot about how to plumb a steam system, it might not work to well.

-Don

No, the shaker can do steam but we are doing hot water.

I don't understand, it can only be plumbed one way, hot water or steam.

What boiler temp is it maintaining?

-Don

Sorry, I thought the field was to describe the furnace capability. The shaker we have can do either but is plumbed for hot water. We are adding the K6 in series and shutting down the shaker, just keeping it on the system in case the K6 malfunctions.

As for firing we haven't started it yet. Trying to get the wiring straight first but we're getting there. Thanks so much.

Jrhughes wrote:Sorry, I thought the field was to describe the furnace capability. The shaker we have can do either but is plumbed for hot water. We are adding the K6 in series and shutting down the shaker, just keeping it on the system in case the K6 malfunctions.

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More importantly, did you buy this KAA-6 new or used, and is it a dual fuel unit???

Before you royally screw things up you
need an electrician to wire it up for you.

1. spend the two hours you need for the electrician
2. You need to plumb the boilers in series parallel so
you can simply open and close valves and have one
set of controls for each unit and a second pump.

Your risking an awful lot doing it yourself, and if its not up to code
and you have an insurance claim your going to have to answer
to an insurance investigator as they will examine everything and
a bad wiring job does not lie.

Ok. Thanks to the clarification given by contributors here, we were able to get it all wired in. Our only problems were bleeding (had an airlock that was really tough to get moving) and how damn cold the house got with 22 hours of no heat.

But the K6 is amazing. It's running great, fire looks just like it should, and our radiators are warming up nicely. It's a struggle to get 3600 sq feet of 12 foot plaster walls heated back up after a cold spell like that, but slowly and surely the K6 is conquering the cold!

So many thanks to everyone who helped!

Jrhughes wrote:Ok. Thanks to the clarification given by contributors here, we were able to get it all wired in. Our only problems were bleeding (had an airlock that was really tough to get moving) and how damn cold the house got with 22 hours of no heat.

But the K6 is amazing. It's running great, fire looks just like it should, and our radiators are warming up nicely. It's a struggle to get 3600 sq feet of 12 foot plaster walls heated back up after a cold spell like that, but slowly and surely the K6 is conquering the cold!

So many thanks to everyone who helped!

When you are dealing with air bubbles and air locked piping
all that is needed is one ounce of dawn dish soap in the boiler
water. That does two things for you, it raises the PH of the water and
also breaks the surface tension of the bubbles and quickly breaks them down
to microbubbles.

How about some pictures of how you wired it, and plumbed it? Everybody here just wants to help and make sure it's safe.

lzaharis wrote:

Jrhughes wrote:Ok. Thanks to the clarification given by contributors here, we were able to get it all wired in. Our only problems were bleeding (had an airlock that was really tough to get moving) and how damn cold the house got with 22 hours of no heat.

But the K6 is amazing. It's running great, fire looks just like it should, and our radiators are warming up nicely. It's a struggle to get 3600 sq feet of 12 foot plaster walls heated back up after a cold spell like that, but slowly and surely the K6 is conquering the cold!

So many thanks to everyone who helped!

When you are dealing with air bubbles and air locked piping
all that is needed is one ounce of dawn dish soap in the boiler
water. That does two things for you, it raises the PH of the water and
also breaks the surface tension of the bubbles and quickly breaks them down
to microbubbles.

What an amazing idea! We seem to have won the battle the hard way this time but I am definitely filing that tidbit away.

Glad you have the heat on now!!!

-Don

Page one of boiler installation instructions: Install by-pass loop as per ( installation diagram) with 1 inch pipe size. Place a tee 1x1/2 in by-pass loop to allow installation of immersion well for the 4006 B Honey Well Hi Limit Control to extend into full water flow. Over fifty years of installation experience has prove to us that the above mentioned by-pass is absolutely necessary for optimum performance of your heating system.

Here is another members contribution for KA-6 Boiler Gang, Thanks go to *WIZ*

If this isn't a "sticky" it should be.

Keystoker KA-6 Operation Guide.

Thanks for posting the WIZ information. All of us can benefit from that.

Olllotj wrote:How about some pictures of how you wired it, and plumbed it? Everybody here just wants to help and make sure it's safe.

I would definitely appreciate a second, third, many pairs of eyes, but I'm having trouble uploading pics.

I have another question, though I already feel greedy and like I've gotten way more help than I could have reasonably expected. We did get the pump wired into the system. Everything seems to work 99% correctly, except my feed seems to be reacting to the Hi limit not Low.

Hi is set to 180. Low to 160. Diff at 10. My understanding is that in this case, if I am not calling for heat (thermostat is off or way down) then the feed and my pump should stop except as set on the timer, until the water cools to 150, then kick on and heat to 160, then cease again. If I am calling for heat, it will only feed up to 180 then cease until dropping to 170 even if I am still calling for heat. As long as I am calling for heat the feed should cycle off at 180 and on at 170, but if no demand it should cycle on at 150 and off at 160. Is this correct?

When we first got it hooked up with the pump wired in the temp had fallen to 145. We turned the system on and the feed started but not the pump. Pump kicked on when temp hit 160 which seemed to make sense. But then it kept going to 185 without shutting down. We tried shutting off the thermostat and it still didn't stop feeding. Turned power off, hubby double-checked the thermostat wires (we did install a new simple dial thermostat) turned it back on, turned thermostat on, gave it a minute, turned it off, feed kept going. After maybe 5 minutes the feed stopped and I thought maybe there's just a delay. Temp was only at 175 so I wasn't overly concerned. Then the timer kicked it on for the 2 pins every 7.5 minutes that the man we purchased it from had in it, and after the pins had passed it just kept feeding through 30 minutes even though it was at 175 still.

The only thing we've changed since is we had our 4006B Hi-Limit set at 180 as well just because I was nervous about overheating. We turned that up to 190 and the feed stopped but this is either a coincidence or really counter-intuitive to me. It seems having that set too low would cause me to burn cooler, not hotter.

Any ideas of what we could check on this would be greatly appreciated. I'll try and get a pic of the units up.

Here is the facts:

McGiever wrote:Here is the facts:

L8124A.pdf

Thank you! I could not find a model # and "Honeywell triple aquastat" wasn't specific enough for Google. This will be a huge help!