| A New Gas Boiler For Our House |
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| Written by John Abbott |
| Tuesday, 21 December 2010 08:01 |
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We have two heating systems in our house for a reason. Natural gas and solid fuel. So, if we have trouble with one, or if the economic advantages are tilted in favor of one fuel over the other, we are set. What we really didn't count on was the backup system (gas) not being there for us when we needed it. 
Copper oxidation on the heat exchanger of the old boiler
Over the years, watching over the repair guys' shoulders, I have picked up enough tricks to fix most of its woes. Even the ultra scary job of vacuuming out the fragile heat exchanger. There, one false step by one ham fisted, vacuumer and its toodle-oo boiler. But, it seemed like this pile of failure was always going to die when we needed it the most. --Did I tell you about last year at Christmas? We have a big Christmas dinner at our house. Family and friends, usually there are about 25 adults, maybe twice that many kids. I got up at 5am the morning of the dinner to get the turkey in the oven. I walked into the house and it was forty three degrees in there. The gas boiler was dead, and we had to fire up the Traeger and burn pellets. Luckily we were sitting on a pallet even though we were burning gas.
There were other elements of barely holding together. Corroded pipes were another problem
So I wanted a new gas boiler. I wanted to install it myself. I wanted it to be highly energy efficient. And I wanted it to be a modulating/condensing type. Nothing here seems all that difficult, but I hit some problems right away. I could buy a four thousand dollar boiler off Ebay and get it (hopefully) shipped to my house. Or, pay a little more and buy it local. But, buying local is tough. Suppliers only sell to contractors. They will not sell to home owners. So, sure I could install my own boiler, but no one local would sell me one. What I ended up doing was working the local neighborhood network again and found a guy with a contractor's license but he wasn't actually doing any contracting right now. I was able to let him buy the boiler for me. 
The new boiler in place, but not yet hooked up. It was lucky it fit perfectly on the old boiler stand.
Previously I had more of a serial line setup. Two pumps, one for each of the two zones in my house, feeding into the return on the Traeger. Then out of the Traeger and into the Heatmaker which had its own pump. Out of the Heatmaker and into the radiators. More than likely there was some issues with flow reduction through the Heatmaker. It had just a single half inch tube as its heat exchanger. Likely there were also issues with the heat exchanger acting as a little radiator when we were only running the corn/pellet boiler. Some of our heat had to have been going up the gas boiler flue. Any new setup is going to allow me to manually switch between heat sources. But, I am no longer going to have the ability to have both online at the same time. Originally the thought was to have the gas as a hot backup to the corn burner. So, if something happened, the corn fire went out an aquastat would notice the cold pipes and the house calling for heat, and the gas would kick in. It never really worked out though. 
The new setup with a temperature gauge and low drain
Soldering on one of the inch and a quarter thread adapters
I got a few tips from users here but the best info was from my plumber Steve. He told me on a horizontal fitting, start at the bottom, six o'clock. Put the heat to it. Then, when it looks ready, touch the solder to the joint, and if it melts, work your torch up and follow along with the joint with the solder until you get to three o'clock. Stop there and switch to the other side. Start again at six, the solder should melt right away, and wrap the torch up and around, following with the solder, past twelve and around again to three. Using this method I didn't have a single failed joint. Steve said the reason was the capillary action drew the solder in too quick. And if you just try to work all the way around a fitting in one pass, as you get to eleven and twelve the solder wrap around, will fall and then cool too close to the edge of the joint. There will be pockets behind the initial edge that will have no solder, and won't take any because of the cooled solder in the front. 
The new boiler on the inside
The new boiler is pretty amazing in construction. The main body is injection molded foam core plastic. The stainless steel boiler is cradled within this. Closed up you have to look at the indicator light to see if the boiler is running. You can't hear it. Being a sucker for cool little features. It has a little tiny window, like three fourths of an inch around, looking into the fire box. It looks like Dante's Inferno in there! It was a big project. One of the bigest plumbing jobs I have ever done by myself. And also, in the shortest amount of time. But, it was one of those things that just had to work. There was no other option. Really the project was very straight forward. I did the half day of prep work on Thursday, and with two very long days, Saturday and Sunday, the project was done.
The plumbing out side of the new boiler.
A very tired installer on Sunday night.
* Funny thing, nobody in this tale wants their names to be known. So, the names, the businesses, don't really exist. I figured, heck a little free advertising. But, "Steve" my plumber said he could be kicked out of the union for letting me do my own work. And, the boiler repair place said they would get in trouble for doing any repair that wasn't then pressure tested. The place where the furnace company would never want it to get out they sold a furnace to me. It is a strange world we live in where there are so many controls in place to prohibit something we have the ability to achieve.
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 ... Here is a better shot of the bottom pipe. I don't think it is galvanized, just plain old iron pipe. As you can see, I wanted to turn it out. I had the pipe wrench on there with the imitation big muscles on the end of it (in the form of a four foot section of pipe on the handle) No luck. I couldn't get it to turn.
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I would have sawed the malleable elbow and split it off the short nipple - then placed a tee with the branch to boiler a and the low fitting to boiler b - or drain to daylight By introducing one supply to the tee branch and the other to the fitting, you do not create a "BULLHEAD" of two supply's in and fighting to go out the branch.
but that's me - what was done here is fine and good Lower pipe
In looking at your pictures of the story you posted on the front page, it is hard to tell, but it looks like the picture with the heading "temperature guage with low drain", it looks as though you have copper connected directly to galvanized. Hard to tell in picture though. Overtime it will look like the picture you have posted above that with the heading of "corroded pipes another problem". You should have a piece of brass in there or a dielectric fitting.
Glad to see that you got everything going again. ...
JA, You will need a brass nipple or a dielectric union where your copper connects to the iron pipe otherwise you will have an issue with electrolysis. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/ Can_you_screw_a_copperfitting_into_a_cast_iron_pipe_wit
hout_a_dielectric_union ...
the above link didn't work so well. Copy and paste the whole thing from dielectric union back to http. Some are saying (in other websites) you won't have an issue with a closed loop system, their reasoning is that there isn't the introduction of oxygen. My thought is to better to be safe than sorry, but then again I'am picky. If you notice to, the pump in the same picture has brass fittings on both ends.
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| Last Updated on Tuesday, 21 December 2010 23:18 |
Ok so what has been going on in my life, over the past three weeks? Well, for one thing, I came down with this nasty-ass'd cold that has been going around this area. I personally think I got it from my plumber Steve*. He was over to talk boiler with me on Saturday, confessed that he had spent the last two weeks "sicker'n a dog" and this was his first day back. By 3pm Sunday afternoon I was reeling with a fever. So that wasn't a fun week. This week I have been consumed in getting our heating system setup.