Navien Combi Water Heater
At first glance I was taken back a little by the material being used in this water heater system. I have never seen black rubber hose being used in a in-floor application. It was not only the rubber hose being used but the size of the hose, 1/4" Id just does not seem like a lot of surface area to me for in-floor.
Existing Black Rubber Hydronic Hose
The black hose simply pushed into the copper pipe to make a manifold, the pressure of the system keeps its sealed. My research concludes that 45psi is the max these connections could hold back. We are running 12 to 20 psi.
Older Combi core HWT
Here you can see the older Combi-Core water tank that was used to heat both their domestic as well as there hydronic heat. The mixing valves being used appeared faulty and both expansion tanks where bad.
Navien Combi Water Heater ... cont.
Navien has really out done themselves in my book with the Navien Combi Water Heater. This unit not only heats your domestic water, but also heats your home ... all in the same box.
New Navien CH-240 Water Heater
The Navien CH-240 tankless bolted right up on the exterior wall and really was plug and play, well of course we had to build a primary manifold and modify the existing loop to be a secondary loop ... but not to complicated.
We controlled the Navien Combi Water Heater boiler system with the new ecobee Wifi thermostat, this way my customer can change thermostat settings from a remote location. And this being a weekend home it will work out great.
I have found especially with customers with boilers, a safety replacement factor. Meaning the customer has lost faith that their boiler is a safe peice of equipment, regardless of how much money they can throw at it…. for their peice of mind they really would prefer to replace it.
In this case the boiler had experienced a flame roll out, meaning flames rolled out of the burn chamber and shorted out the igniter wires, this of coarse sent a electrical burning smell throughout the home. After inspection and talking to the home owner we both came to the conclusion it was time for replacement.
Existing Weil Mclain boiler
Above is the Weil Mclain boiler that is 28+ years old, even though the cast boiler section is sound, most of the components are still 28+ years old. Never mind looking into the reason for the flame roll out … more than likely a plugged section in the boiler.
New Weil Mclain Boiler
As you can see the new Weil Mclain boiler slid right into place. The pump, zone valves, thermostats, drain valves and expansion tank where all replaced at the same time. We added Dielectric unions to the supply and return lines.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
We had been after changing this old National-US boiler out for years, this year the roll out from the burners started to send carbon monoxide in to the home … enough to cause headaches.
Old National-US boiler
After shutting down the boiler and advising the owners, it was decided to replace the boiler with a new Crown Aruba3 80% boiler. You can see on the picture above the indications from flame rollout on the front of the boiler.
New Crown Aruba3 80% boiler
We positioned the new Crown Aruba3 80% boiler to face 90 degrees from its original position. This will give the service technician easier access to both the boiler interior and exterior controls for maintenance and repairs if needed.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
If you have a hydronic heating system, and you have an older Wirsbo manifold system I would think about looking at the condition of that system. In particular I would be looking at the gaskets, these have rubber or ceramic type gaskets, these gaskets need to inspected and or replaced every 10 years(in my opinion).
Wirsbo Manifold
Here you see a 5 zone Wirsbo manifold(s), 1 manifold for supply and 1 for return. 3 gaskets are needed in each manifold.
Opened Wirsbo Manifold
Above you can see where we opened up the manifold for inspection, making sure to have drained the water from the system below the manifolds before starting.
Damaged Gaskets
In this manifold we found several damaged gaskets, we elected to replace all 6 gaskets in 3 different locations through out the home.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
There is not a lot of HVAC companies that still work on steam boilers, and there is certainly not a lot that still work on commercial steam boilers.
Commercial Steam Boiler
Here we have a older boiler with even older controls, the boiler is dead cold and has a burnt out control board. The problem is getting replacement parts that simply snap into place for these older boilers.
Old Steam Boiler Controls
The control board in the picture above that was bad is located on top of the panel box, the new board is installed inside of the panel box on the bottom right. After dialing in the control board and firing up the boiler we realized the condensate pump was not working, the pump was bound up. This is not the first time we had a bound up pump on this system.
Condensate collector box
We felt because there was no strainer (filter) on the condensate coming back that we would be seeing more issues with the pump and the condensate collector box. We ended up replacing the entire collector box with the pump.
New collector box
Here you see the new condensate collector box and pump. We also replaced the corroded check valve and added a strainer to the system.
New Strainer
By adding a strainer we will keep debris from coming back to the condensate collector and by adding a valve we can easily clean the strainer.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
This Laars Lite pool heater has seen the end of its life, sadly to say it was only 10 years old. The really unfortuate part is that this appeared to be the 3rd pool heater replacemnt since the pool was installed. Fortuantly at this time my customer wanted to do more than just heat the pool, he also wanted to heat the pool room and he did not want to have to replace the heater in another 10 years.
Existing Laars Lite pool heater
I’m not use to dealing with pool heaters, but after seeing what kind of corrosion can occur I do not understand why pool owners still use them. Now it could be this is a lower quality of pool heater?
Laars Lite corrosion
Never the less my customer did not want a repeat. I proposed using a Burham ES27 boiler with a Triangle Tube MF-135 heat exchanger to heat their pool. This way we have a closed loop system that heats water with water. The pool water will never be introduced into the boiler system. The ES27 is 85% AFUE and is atmospheric, and because its cast iron … its built to last.
Burham ES27 Boiler
Being a cast iron boiler the Burham ES27 did weigh considerably more than the Laars Lite pool heater, fortunately I did have help on this day… I just didn’t feel like wrestling 460lbs all by myself.
Boiler Loop
If you can make it out the Triangle Tube MF-135 heater exchanger is the black cylinder just to the left and down from center. Its hard to believe a small cylinder like that could heat an entire pool. We control the pool loop with a Ranco controller.
Modine Heater
Now for the pool room itself, we installed a Modine HC-108 hot water fan coil. We ran a separate loop off the boiler into the room. We control this with an Honeywell 4000 thermostat. Now for you people that know what a pool room can do to copper … we actually coated everything with a high heat clear coat paint.
Alpine Heating And Cooling
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.
Triangle Tube was not my first pick for a boiler for this project, but I had to look at all the requirements. The boiler had to be high efficient, I had to get it vented out with PVC, I had to separate the combustion air from the exhaust venting and I had to do all this in a very confined place. Triangle Tube met all the above.
Older American Standard Boiler
The American Standard boiler had failed, there where several minor issues that could have been resolved but our customer wanted an upgrade. The house was built in the late 30’s and even though the customer feels that this boiler was original I’m thinking its was put in a few decades later.
New Triangle Tube Boiler
The triangle Tube boiler fit like a glove, in fact I was within inches of making this a unsuccessful install. I forgot who told me this great advice … “a tape measure never lies” you have to read into it to understand why its called advice.
The boiler comes with its own primary pump but lacks a external pump control, besides the obvious hydronic devices I had to ad a transformer and a relay to make a complete system. The boiler mounts on the wall similar to the Navien tankless. Overall I’m really happy I got to install one of these boilers.
Heating And Cooling Skagit County
Need a Heat Pump, Air Conditioner, Furnace, Boiler or Tankless Water Heater? We install them all over Skagit county including Mount Vernon WA, Burlington WA, Anacortes, Sedro Woolley, La Conner, Stanwood WA, and on Camano Is.