Water boiler - max/min temps

[joecool85]

I want an OWB - that's it as far as meeting the criteria to post in this section lol.

I just bought a house with an oil fired boiler that runs the domestic hot water and heats the house via baseboards. The max temp is set at 190F and the min at 180F, is this optimum for efficiency or should I adjust the settings?

The domestic hot water had been set all the way to hot (~160F), so I turned that down to ~150F or so, I'll probably turn it down farther later but we'll see.

 

[oneoldbanjo]

A pretty wide open topic! I don't know a thing about your boiler temps - the people that installed it and set the limits probably had a good idea of what they were doing.

When my Woodmaster was delivered the settings were at 180 degree max and 170 degree for turning the draft blower on. These settings resulted in a very short burn time and the OWB would smoke for the first couple of minutes as it never seemed to get a hot fire burning with that short cycle time. The lower limit has been changed to 160 and I believe it burns cleaner now - but I have no idea about efficiency.

When my OWB is not working my electric water heater is set around 140. When the OWB is working I got so much hot water you have to be careful not to get your bath water too hot - and the guests have to be warned that the hot water is very HOT!

 

[mtfallsmikey]

Well...time for some learnin' !!..Go to www.heatinghelp.com, order "Pumping Away", and any other books of Dan's that interest you, do some searching, post questions on "The Wall". everyone there is a "Wethead", or lover of things hydronic. Learn how your system works, download the free heat loss software from www.slantfin.com. and run it for your house, see how many feet of baseboard it conmes up with vs. what you have. Usually 180 deg. was the industry standard; depending on your heat loss / load / type of construction, your existing boiler may be oversized. with an OWB, you will need some type of heat exchanger, since they are normally non-pressurized and your existing system is. Good luck to you!

 

[secureland]

I want an OWB - that's it as far as meeting the criteria to post in this section lol.

I just bought a house with an oil fired boiler that runs the domestic hot water and heats the house via baseboards. The max temp is set at 190F and the min at 180F, is this optimum for efficiency or should I adjust the settings?

The domestic hot water had been set all the way to hot (~160F), so I turned that down to ~150F or so, I'll probably turn it down farther later but we'll see.

Check out www.loveplumbing.com it's as good a plumbing site as this is a tree-site.

 

[mtfallsmikey]

Most hydronic heating systems with domestic hot water heating are set up for 180 - 190 deg. high limit, 160 deg. low limit. Your Domestic HW temp is way too high at 150!!! This poses an extremely high risk of scalding. Reset it to 120 - 130 deg. If you are unable to get it that low, then something is wrong with your mixing valve.

 

[joecool85]

Most hydronic heating systems with domestic hot water heating are set up for 180 - 190 deg. high limit, 160 deg. low limit. Your Domestic HW temp is way too high at 150!!! This poses an extremely high risk of scalding. Reset it to 120 - 130 deg. If you are unable to get it that low, then something is wrong with your mixing valve.

I've just hooked up my internet here, so I'm back. I turned down the domestic hot water most of the way on the mixing valve, it should be about 130 now and feels about right. Pretty hot, but not dangerous.

As for the boiler, I guess I will need to do some research to find out what the most efficient settings are.