The Glitch & The Fix

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An installer uses an unpressurized thermal storage tank for drainback protection of a solar thermal system, and carefully slopes all the collectors and collector array piping for 1/4 in. per ft. drop.

An engineer is planning underground insulated piping for a small district heating system, which receives heat from a central boiler plant and distributes it to three separate buildings. He is planning what he calls a “primary/secondary” piping system.

The piping strapped to the bottom of the floor joists is supposedly part of a primary loop.

An installer is asked to use a pellet-fired boiler to supply heat to two zones of low-temperature radiant floor panels. The system includes a three-way motorized mixing valve to reduce the supply water temperature to the distribution circuits.

A heating contractor who’s trying out his first wall-mounted mod/con boiler installs it as shown above. When buying the boiler, the contractor was told to use a pair of closely spaced tees to separate the boiler and distribution system.

A designer needs to tie in an indirect water heater to a multiple boiler system. He selects a hydraulic separator for the project and connects the piping of the indirect water heater on the same side as the boilers.

The designer’s intent was to supply a low-temperature floor-heating zone, as well as a higher-temperature baseboard zone and air handler, from a thermal storage tank heated by a pellet-fueled boiler.

An installer sets up a zoned distribution system. To keep it simple, he uses the same size piping for the headers and all the distribution circuits. The heat source is a low-mass copper tube boiler with high flow resistance.

An installer who is used to boiler replacements may view the mechanical room aspects of changing from a boiler to a geothermal heat pump the same as a boiler changeout; just swapping out one “box” for another. Unfortunately, this can lead to some significant operating problems.

An installer pipes up a system using a conventional gas-fired boiler to supply heat to a low-temperature radiant panel system.