The Glitch & The Fix

RSS

Due to the high price of fuel oil, a contractor is hired by a building owner to install a wood-gasification boiler to supplement the oil boiler. The building’s distribution system consists of a three-zoned air handler with hot water coils.

The three photos, provided by a friend of the industry, are all from the same hydronic heating installation.

An installer is asked to provide a relatively simple single-zone floor heating system supplied by a mod/con boiler. He’s heard that a hydraulic separator is a good component in such systems

The system was intended to supply one high-temperature heating zone, a couple of medium-temperature zones and two zones of floor heating for a garage and breezeway where antifreeze protection was needed.

A homeowner asks his local heating installer if a geothermal heat pump can be combined with radiant floor heating. The system he creates is meant to supply a dozen independently controlled zones of low-temperature floor heating.

A homeowner wants to use a wood-gasification boiler as his primary source of space heating. He also wants a propane-fueled boiler to automatically come on for backup should he decide not to tend the fire, or if he is away. The owner has read that a generously sized thermal storage tank is necessary to allow a gasification boiler to operate at consistent high efficiency.

A hydronic system is to supply four panel radiators, each with its own thermostatic radiator valve, and an indirect water heater from a gas-fired sectional cast-iron boiler. The system is designed using primary/secondary piping.

The hydronic system shown above was created to connect three gas-fired, cast-iron boilers to a low-temperature distribution system that supplies 12,000 ft. of 3/4 in. PEX tubing embedded in the floor slab.The installer spends several frustrating hours attempting to get the air out of the system. He finally gets it purged to the point that the distribution circulator is at least moving some water through the floor-heating circuits.

Joe Wrenchturner gets a call to install solar water heating for a longtime customer. He buys some flat-plate collectors through an online source and decides to assemble the remainder of the system using hardware he installs for other hydronic systems.

An installer is asked to provide a system that supplies two zones of fin-tube baseboard and two zones of floor heating. The system also supplies domestic water heating. He selects a mod/con boiler because it’s lighter than a conventional boiler.