Weather Effects on Furance

Nice set up. Could you send me a picture of the front? Do you you your oil/gas burner at all?

Hear you go... duh, was going to do that too, right?

Left aquastat controls circulator pump... on at 140 degrees... 150 or so on the control, by the thermometer it is 140.
Right controls fan and "automag" valve for power failure and emergency overheating... if it gets to 210 degrees it opens and lets gravity move water into main zone on first floor of house. (It's never happened). It will also open in a power failure. Plan to turn breaker off next weekend and test this to see if it handles the load or I need to cut the air down a little more. I believe it will be adequate, but don't "KNOW"... as I've never tried it.

Strap ons on supply are, "modine heater" for 'normal overheat', in case it goes further past where I want it to... set at 195 degrees. Hasn't come on since I installed the barometric damper and got the air supply reigned in a little more. The top on is a 5-6 interrupt circuit. If the boiler water in the supply is 140 degrees or more, the oil burner won't get a signal from "TT" to start. No power to it when the aquastat is "open" (>140)...

Have to say, the contractor did do a heck of a job. Despite redoing the chimney connector myself and setting up the barometric damper on my own...

slabadie wrote:Nice set up. Could you send me a picture of the front? Do you you your oil/gas burner at all?

Just came back up from checking my fire...

Just rebounding from demand... nearly 175 degree water temperature.

Door = 570 degrees
Stack = 325 degrees

Coal is nearly level with the bottom of the door, never mind that little sissy mark they put on the front to the left of the door. Mounded up in the middle... about 2 degrees cooler than the surface of the sun if you open the door...

Thinking about designing a grill to put in there... steaks on that puppy, make the whole neighborhood jealous.

Last oil bill...

From 12/19 to 11/14, burned 50 gallons of #2 fuel oil. Heated domestic hot water for six people, and three apartments and a basement totaling about 4,000 square feet. Honestly had to burn airtight insert in living room fireplace most nights through cold snaps... house rated for 130K heat loss, WC90 obviously 90K. It might keep up, but you'd have to stand by it shoveling coal or wood into it most of the time to do it.

K-factor was 17.06 for the month...

K-factor for 2/29 to 4/16 last year was 8.80

"K-factor" is like miles per gallon for your car... seems to be working decent... lady at the oil company said 17.06 was "low" as it calculates based on past consumption patterns and it was much more than that actually. They might go back in and refigure it for automatic deliveries in the future. She said I could also watch it and if I think I need more than 1/2 tank call them instead of waiting too.

slabadie wrote:Nice set up. Could you send me a picture of the front? Do you you your oil/gas burner at all?

What is the square box just to the left of your fan switch? Beautiful plumbing job, mine looks like an aborsion. Where is your oil burner hiding? How does your value for the power failure work? What would I ask for in the supply house? Not sure what a modine heater, can that you used as a kind of dump?

That is the double acting aquastat that controls the fan, and "emergency overheat zone". If the boiler temperature gets up to 210 degrees or so, it'll open the magsafe valve and dump more heat by gravity into the power failure loop. Same thing as "triggering" a power failure.

Oil burner is to the left, follow the pipes... about twenty feet or so away. Here's a picture... grab a napkin, if you liked the plumbing on the wood boiler you're going to leave a puddle on your keyboard.

"Modine" is a "unit heater" that hangs on the ceiling and has a finned coil and a fan... blows wicked warm air at 180 degrees or so, borders on "hot" at higher temperatures, and less warm at lower temps but effective anyway. Maintains area in basement where plumbing is at about 63 degrees, and will be higher if things aren't "right" and the boiler is overshooting.

Great "dump zone" if there is power... won't gravity feed and obviously without electricity pumps don't run and fans don't blow.

Which part are you thinking about asking for? Overheat controls came with the "magsafe"... I think you'd ask for a "power failure valve" and it comes with the controller. Meant to be connected to the double acting aquastat to the left of the fan switch in that well...

slabadie wrote:What is the square box just to the left of your fan switch? Beautiful plumbing job, mine looks like an aborsion. Where is your oil burner hiding? How does your value for the power failure work? What would I ask for in the supply house? Not sure what a modine heater, can that you used as a kind of dump?

Worked with my father when I was a teenager. He's retired now, and has Parkinson's Disease. No way he could have helped to any degree on doing a job of this scope. I might have been able to pull it off... but, it would have taken a month of Sundays.

1,300 feet of copper tubing, and baseboard to heat 3,500 square feet of three unit apartment building, plus the Modine, indirect hot water heater, and ten circulators with flow checks and controls...

Monstrous job, and it would not have looked like this, and worked as well, I am afraid. Smaller job, single unit, 2,000 ft home I'd have done it myself.

Borrowed dad's stuff a couple years ago and set up and piped my own oil tank. Oil man came by and I mentioned I had done it. He wanted to check it. He walked to the outside pipes, looked and said... "Hmmm." Went inside and said, "You did this? Where did you learn to pipe?"

Bought the tank, gauge and whistle, and two ten foot sections of pipe.

When I was done, I had a five inch long piece of steel pipe left over. They're pitched properly back to the tank, and side by each level from the elbow to the end.

It's something that takes alot of trial and error and practice to learn to do it "pretty"... sometimes it works better than "ugly", but if "ugly" works it works.

Very Nice...
Glad to see quality work still being done.

LeonMPST

Magnificant job!!!

When you get a chance could you send a picture of the left side of the coal furnance and the Modine heater please.

I noticed that you have 2 aquastats clamped to the same pipe, why? Are all your aquastats 6000A? Are you running dual circulators.?

I'll snap one tomorrow... one angle I don't have yet.

2 strap ons... one runs a 5-6 interrupt that breaks the 5-6 connection from "TT" on the oil boiler. It won't come on once the water temperature reaches 140 degrees, and comes back online if it falls below that.

The other runs the overheat bypass of the thermostat controlling the "Modine" heater for 'regular' overheat. The "overheat protection" from the main control on the Rt hand side is the "automag" power failure controller.

Just one TACO 007, plenty... temps are never more than 2-3 degrees apart between the two boilers and then only rarely and for a short time. Plenty of water running between them.

slabadie wrote:LeonMPST

Magnificant job!!!

When you get a chance could you send a picture of the left side of the coal furnance and the Modine heater please.

I noticed that you have 2 aquastats clamped to the same pipe, why? Are all your aquastats 6000A? Are you running dual circulators.?

Is the configuration of your aquastats of your design based on the size your square footage or is the setup recommended? Which aquastat is your thermostat connected to? My thermostate is connected to the 6006b. Do you have to manually open yuor flow check in a power failure or does it open by itself? What is an average price for the modine heater and the and the double acting aquastat?

Sorry for all the questions, but I want to do some design in the off season. I have one around here that is familar with hot water coal furnaces. I am kind of on my own.

Also is there a functional reason for using black pipe over copper?

Old boiler installers like to screw black pipe into boilers, and connect copper to black pipe... besides the fact that the black screw pipe is tougher than a bull's horn and it won't get messed up from overheating, not especially. I've seen them piped up in copper. Not so sure copper is advantageous price wise, at least when the job was done. Now that the economy is tanked it's possible copper has come back down enough that it's cheaper.

Contractor has "always done them this way". The guy doesn't change anything. What he was doing twenty years ago, that's still legal, he's still doing today. He uses the same aquastats, circulators, flanges, fittings, and solenoids. His trucks are stocked with them. When there is a service call, and he did the install, he can fix anything in the building with what is in his truck. Unless water is running out from under the boiler and it's off on low water.

Because the boilers are on the same level, and the piping runs along the ceiling and back, no gravity feed in power failure between the boilers. The "power failure valve" is over the boiler and connected to the "main zone" on the first floor of the house. There's 25 ft, plus a small convector, connected to that. Enough to handle what the boiler will be making for heat without the combustion blower.

Not positive on prices... anything I buy I get at "Winslow Supply" where dad bought materials to pipe about 250 houses in 30 years. I get a good deal still... The entire job here was one price. With the economy in the fix it is, I could have bought a fairly decent full sized regular cab 4X4 truck with a plow pretty easy with it.

slabadie wrote:Is the configuration of your aquastats of your design based on the size your square footage or is the setup recommended? Which aquastat is your thermostat connected to? My thermostate is connected to the 6006b. Do you have to manually open yuor flow check in a power failure or does it open by itself? What is an average price for the modine heater and the and the double acting aquastat?

Sorry for all the questions, but I want to do some design in the off season. I have one around here that is familar with hot water coal furnaces. I am kind of on my own.

"Left" side of boiler, or was it the "Right" side you wanted a picture of?

LeonMSPT

I hope you are still monitoring this thread. I was a little disappointed this mornig to fine my house temp to be at 64*, the door temp was 200*. I went to bed with a door temp of 360* (usually I keep it at 300*, I decided to be a little daring). I had a mound of 10'-12" deep and thought that I would wake of to a warmer house. The overnight temp was down around 15*. My guess is that it probably has something to do with the size of my damper letting to much heat out. When I shook down the ash it was a very light power, but there was some large clumps of fused ash in the firebox.