In over my head....... HELP!!!!!!

[Jmulford]

Ok guys I bought a 138 year old farm house that has a CB wood boiler that was hooked into the BaseBoard heat setup that was hooked to a propane boiler but who ever did this by-passed the PB unit and this mess is driving me nuts, I am including pics in hopes someone can point me in the right direction since this is a 2 story home with a basement and I have NO HEAT upstairs at all....... I can't find anyone that knows anything about boiler heat that will even look at it. Soon as I try to tell them its a OWB they start a Sales pitch for a propane forced air system that is $20K or more (Bangs head on tree) can anyone help me out with trying to sort this mess out?

 

[diezelsmoke]

Looks like your propane heater is a standard water heater with a heat storage tank, probably a electric water heater.

 

[Jmulford]

The propane unit is not in the pics they have this rigged so the boiler heats the hot water for the house also but the other water heater is being used as a storage tank and in place of the propane boiler...... not sure is any of it is hooked up even close to right since the pics in the boiler book show nothing close to this..... arg

 

[Mustang71]

Looks like a mess. I'm not sure what you have going on there the pictures don't do much for me other than a water heater piped to another water heater.

It's being heated with the owb and not the propane boiler?

 

[sirbuildalot]

It looks pretty Mickey moused for sure. I believe regular white PVC pipe is only rated to carry up to 140 degree F. You could see temps between 170 and even up to 200. One big thing to look out for is to make sure you have a decent sized dump zone set up, that way if you aren't calling for heat the extra hot water has somewhere to go. That storage tank will get to temp pretty quick. Can't be more than 80 gallons. The best boilers have a built in water jacket around them. I have a thermo control with a water heater for a storage tank. Had a couple loops of pex installed for a dump zone. Couldn't get it to work like I wanted, so I finally disconnected it and use it as a regular wood stove now. I had similar issues that you are having, most plumbers don't deal in wood heat. I would try to find someone who sets up true OWB's and call them.

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

Wow, that looks like a mess!

Is the green stuff water hose? Pex? If it's Pex (I've never seen green Pex though) those are not the right clamps.

I also see black pipe mixed with galvanized pipe. Black pipe is for gas, or boilers, galvanized for drinking water and galvanized isn't that great for drinking water even at that.

And is that PVC? PVC isn't designed for high temps.

Looks like whoever set that up knew just enough to be dangerous.

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

As far as upstairs heat, do you have water making it up there? The system pressure may be too low or there could be an air pocket.

 

[Mustang71]

Home owner special. That's y people like us professionals get paid to install boilers. Just because it works for now doesn't mean it's safe, correct, or going to last long.

 

[Mustang71]

And really the main boiler loop and the owb loop should be separate and have a heat exchanger transferring the heat. There's no reason to be removing anything when adding on a wood boiler.

 

[Andy-H]

open the valve above the 8" long galvanized pipe on the water heater on the left

 

[Jmulford]

ok the thing that looks like PVC is a POOL style heat exchanger that is hooked to the other water heater, the green pipe is the PEX that came from CB with the boiler. I am going to be taking better pics later today to try to get as much info to you guys as I can. I can't find out who installed this and this is the only heat for the house so have to get it working before it starts getting too cold lol

 

[Jmulford]

Looks like a mess. I'm not sure what you have going on there the pictures don't do much for me other than a water heater piped to another water heater.

It's being heated with the owb and not the propane boiler?

the propane one was unhooked because someone seemed to think the tank in the yard would blow up any minute and tried to half a** this

 

[Andy-H]

Sorry missed the second pipe behind it. what about the circulation pump?

 

[Jmulford]

And really the main boiler loop and the owb loop should be separate and have a heat exchanger transferring the heat. There's no reason to be removing anything when adding on a wood boiler.

thats what I am seeing in the books for the boiler and it almost looks like they tried to use the old waterheater that don't work as a water tank/storage tank with the heat exchanger hooked to it

 

[Jmulford]

Sorry missed the second pipe behind it. what about the circulation pump?

that is on the bottom of the left tank in the first pic

 

[Mustang71]

I guess you could do it with a water heater that's how an indirect water heater works but it wouldn't be my choice of a heat exchanger .

 

[Mustang71]

I understand what they are trying to accomplish with the tanks. And I'm sure it works but I don't think it would work in reverse if the propane boiler is hooked backed because you would have to heat up that 80 gallons of water before you heat the house. If there was a by pass loop to by pass the tanks it would work.

That's some back woods engineering you have there.

 

[Jmulford]

I understand what they are trying to accomplish with the tanks. And I'm sure it works but I don't think it would work in reverse if the propane boiler is hooked backed because you would have to heat up that 80 gallons of water before you heat the house. If there was a by pass loop to by pass the tanks it would work.

That's some back woods engineering you have there.

I know the old PB is not hooked up past just using the manifold so I bought this and was going to try to just unhook the old water heater and just do the HX hooked to the new manifold with the cuir. pump being on the hot side and the return just goes back to the boiler, sorry for my crapy windows drawing

 

[Mustang71]

That manifold is for radiant flooring allowing for many loops and the temperature to be adjusted.

You need to get the PB piped back into the house loop and get that functional. Then I'd worry about the owb. Pipe a hx in somewhere convenient in the main loop and you can hook the owb up there. I don't know much about owb but I know about boilers and all the piping involved to heat stuff.

There are different types of loops in a house and sometimes there are zone valves. There is a basic idea of supply and return. You could have a mono flow loop where there's one main loop and each small base board comes off that. You could have one main loop that goes around the house or you could have zones with a few smaller loops for parts of the house. Or the same few loops and no zones. You need to know how it's piped and how it works to install the boiler correctly. Then you need a way to bleed all the air out of the lines so it heats.

 

[Deleted member 117362]

There is no way I could make that tight loop with pex I used. Those are wrong type of clamps as stated. Are you sure that is 180 degree rated pex?