Gravity Feeding?


  #1  
Old 12-13-04, 11:59 AM
M
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Gravity Feeding?

I recently had a new boiler installed in my home. It is a Utica with three zones and circulators. I already had to fix a wiring problem myself and now am having a plumbing problem as well.

When the zone for the main house calls for heat, hot water seems to gravity feed through the other two zones even though the thermostats are set to the lowest settings. The reason I think it's gravity feeding is because the circulators aren't coming on but water flows through the loops on its own.

I noticed on a friends system, there are one way valves on each zone except one, which happens to be the main house and the lowest point in the system. My system does not have these valves. Should these one way valves be installed and should they be on each zone or just the ones higher than the lowest one? Any help would be appreciated.
 
  #2  
Old 12-13-04, 12:17 PM
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Flow Checks

I just found some Flow Check valves on the Taco web site. It explanes that these do prevent gravity or ghost flow for systems with more than one zone but it does not give installation instructions.

So part of my question still remains. I need to know if there are any special requirements or if I can install them anywhere after the circulator and do I need one on all three zones. They are simply operated by the water so I assume that they need to be installed in the horizontal position so they will close.

Thanks again.
 
  #3  
Old 12-13-04, 01:48 PM
Victorious1_1
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I have just installed a Legacy boiler with a tankless DHW coil and I'm finding that I'm losing a lot of heat through the one pipe loop when the boiler is just running to make hot water. I believe that if I install a flow check on the supply pipe that I will have more hot water available at the taps and my house will not heat up when there is no thermostat call for heat.

Our problems are similar and I feel that the flow checks will solve our problem effectively by not allowing gravity feed which would raise the room temp slowly and needlessly.

Taco makes a flow check valve (222 series I think) and so does Conbraco(35FC series)

Please bear in mind that I'm no expert, but, the flow check operation plain and simply makes sense for our problems.

Vic
 
 

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