Air shouldn't be getting back in the system, you probably just haven't got it all out yet.

Here's a link to the more modern air seperators and their operation

Spirotherm, Inc. - Spirovent - Air Elimination Products
EASB-JR Air Separator - Bell & Gossett
How Enhanced Air Separator Works - Bell & Gossett (HVAC) industry.

 

Just an adder to what 383 said. It takes time to get all of the air out of the system. A lot of air is entrained in the water and it takes a while to come out. It doesn't come out right away.

 

So is the chain of thought here now that if the air was out i wouldnt have that rattle on the check valve and thru the house pipes?

and am i supposed to be unscrewing the top of the 2 or 3 places and venting this air myself or is it automatic?

 

You feel warmer because there are fewer and less temperature swings because of the outdoor reset. Enjoy.

manual differential is fine. some systems work better that way. the logic in the 260 is good, but it does have to cover a range of field situations so may not be optimal for all cases. give it a couple weeks to settle in and see how it goes.

the spring check is probably most of the source of the noise problem. It is also, however, probably amplified (quite literally) by the way he supported the "header" piping by screwing into the floor joists in the ceiling above and hanging the piping from the threaded rods. Your boiler system is now quite tightly coupled to the rest of the building. Much better to mount this stuff to a foundation wall or support from the floor if possible.

 

Are you talking about the Hi-Vent that is mounted on top of the Taco air scoop? Yes, the tiny brass cap should be loose to allow trapped air to be release. it is a float valve. Air rises, the float drops, air is released, the water rises, raising the float thus sealing the orifice.

 

Ill talk to him today more when he gets here but when you say the 260 has to learn, have i taken all the learning out of it by him setting a manual diff? or does it still 'learn' then? Heck i may put it on auto after he leaves if it sounds like a good idea.

then of course he's putting in the relay on the stat to help keep down the short cycling as well. And interesting comment about the amplification. I guess i'm lucky i can only hear the noise thru my pipes and not thru my ceilings..that would be crazy! Either way, get rid of the spring valve and the issue would be gone..so we will have a talk today.

anything that looked like a screw i could bleed, i loosened and retightened. I guess ill tell him today i did that in an effort to get what i perceived as air out and let him 'reset' that screw or whatever he has to do. But i heard that spring noise before i even touched anything

 

The differential is only part of what it 'learns'. Read the Wiki page on PID controller if you want to see what goes on in the little blue box (and on a very small chip, at that).

 

"And a very EXPENSIVE chip, at that."

FYP..

Pedro

 

PID controller - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

you lost me when the formulas started showing up. I think that is too heavy a reading for christmas eve. Will look at it later. I hope that relay he's putting in today also helps with some of the short cycling. Just seems like the boiler cools down so fast...when you get to target, you can watch it drop and it's only a few minutes until it turns back on. I guess because it only heats 4 gallons at a time and i have 191 ft of pipe to heat?

 

ask him what kind of relay, I'm curious what he's up to. And that Tekmar takes a few weeks to get its bearings. Everytime you touch a setting it goes back to square one and starts learning all over again.

 

aww shucks i just turned it back to his original 16 diff so i guess it started learning all over again! Didnt know that

will post pics of the relay after it's installed. Only thing i remember is it had a manually set delay of up to 10 min for the firing to start.

 

Sounds like he is trying to post purge the boiler to recover whatever BTUs are available and let the Tekmar decide if the burner really needs to fire or not... But, given the low water mass of the boiler maybe he's doing something else

 

you may be right

he told me that the circulator on top of the boiler turns on at the same time as the boiler fires...they are 'one' unit

he now wants the circ to turn on but the boiler not fire. thus using whatever is in the boiler i assume..then like you said the 260 can decide if firing is needed.

but this is just conjecture at this point

assuming what you typed is true though, is this a smart thing to do or am i asking for trouble? I personally have witnessed the temp shoot up right after start up then simmer down so maybe there are a few btus left in there

 

I'm not sure there are enough BTUs held in 5 gallons of water to make it worthwhile, but then again I'm not in the business, and your installer is the guy who is standing behind his work. I wouldn't feel comfortable second guessing him. Let him do his thing, and see what it does... Can't hurt!

 

well in fairness i complained about short cycling the first day. Maybe he's trying to appease me. Since then i cant say i have any short cycling but then again, what is the definition of short cycling lol. (i'd need to sit here with a notebook and stopwatch)

Even if it's a bad thing he installed i think i can crank it down to 30 seconds. So wouldnt be any real 'damage' per se. In theory i think the same thing may be able to be accomplished by a larger differential.

anyhow, i guess when he puts the box in and starts things up i'm sure will see right away if there's excess heat in that 5 gallons of water or not..

I guess ill ask him about insulating all those pipes too but i cant see any reason why it's a bad thing to do so

edit: he's not here yet but i have interesting activity to report..i heard the thermostat click on...then i heard the check valve thing rattle which means that circulator is turned on..but with an ice cold boiler, not on for probably 1/2 hour or more, i dont get why the circ turned on. Weird!

1/2 hour later edit: was a call for heat turned on heated up and turned off...by the time i got into the room i could see it was already down to 135 and the low point was 127. Then within a minute it fired up again. Is turning off then on in a minute or so really how it's supposed to go? Just cools over superfast i guess.

 

ok he's here now..it's a time delay relay..he hates becket managers and never would use them. Then he's gonna put the tekmar back on auto to let it handle the differential.

the relays purpose is to pump the water that is in the boiler (and already heated from last cycle) out into the baseboards....he stated that there is heat in the boiler yet even when the burner turns off...and since i've watched the temp shoot up upon start up, i know he's right

then if after (whatever he sets it at but probably 1 min) minutes, if the heat from the boiler not enough, it will turn on the burner. I did tell him just today i had the burner turn off and then on within a minute or so and i wasnt sure if it was good that it did that but he said thats what problem this relay will solve. He is looking for longer run times and said that is more efficient than turning things on and off all the time. Since the boiler will be cooler from the time delay sucking the heat out, the boiler will run longer to meet target temperature.

ill report more when he's done doing that and changing out the nozzle.

also i told him about the check valve..he doesnt like to use circ. with built in ones.has problems. And he said needs 1ft of pipe to do a flow? vent. So i dont know what to do..maybe see if he can run more pipe and put that in

he did say it's definitely from running right up to that elbow why it's making the noise

edit: just left...bad relay so he has to come back with one to try again. Also he said to put in that other type of check valve means too much piping and draining things so he said he will order a circ with built in check valve. I asked him why he doesnt like them and he said it's because they freeze then the customer doesnt have heat. I said i cant live with that noise that wasnt here before so he will put one in and hope that cures my noise

can you guys take a peek at the setup....see to me it just seems like taking out the existing circulator and 4 elbows and a few feet of pipe and you are done...like a U shaped thing. But apparently it's not that ez and he will do the new circ/with valve built in

PS he started and stopped the boiler many many times. Overall it did seem quieter most of the time but he said the start cannot be the exact same every single time. He put a 70 nozzle in instead of the 80 that was in there. He said even the guy at the boiler place agreed it's a better nozzle. Said something about the angle and pattern being different.

 

cant hold steady but can get better pic if you need them...and since he left of course the boiler is working OT to catch up...it's short cycling a lot and now i DO have the same loud bangs occasionally...but ill sit on it for a few days before i pass judgment completely on the new nozzle. Or should it not even be doing the boom during short cycling? Stays on like 2 seconds then off.

edit: i've been monitoring it and i see when it calls for heat, the circ turns on and it does bring the temp up to almost, if not, the high limit so when the boiler turns on , it's not needed and turns immediately off. This conclusively tells me that the delay relay he wants to install WILL prevent this issue and that there is some heat in the boiler that is useful.

for the record he did see lots of carbon on the original nozzle thing (the circular thing that looks like a paper candle holder ) and so something was definitely amiss there..wasnt just my imagination..and heck he may need to try another one in a week or so..who knows

edit at 6PM. the short cycling is driving me so nuts..i cranked it up to 10+- diff...and i noticed he had changed the firing delay to 10 seconds..im positive it was 1 minute before..so i changed it back...(i dont know what firing delay even does to be honest) i hope this stops all the short cycling and the booming He did say this wouldnt explode..i hope he's right. So for past 2 hours i couldnt get from 65 to 67 yet in here..but meanwhile the temp outside raised about 10-15 degrees so the water is set a lot cooler than before so thats probably why the fighting going on

 

Dude you need to chill out and not start unadjusting things he's adjusted. Particularly if you don't know what the settings do. If you were my customer, I'd be pretty mad.

Fire delay has nothing to do with when the tekmar makes the boiler fire. It has to do with telling the control when it should expect the boiler to fire after any pre-purge or draft-proving cycles, etc.

The 260 will spend a couple days figuring things out. It will cycle a lot during that time. It will be worse if you keep messing with it.

The initial delay relay is a neat idea. Probably not a huge benefit, but not bad either. Kinda makes it a 2-stager.

 

There's no time delay on that relay ... just yer basic SPDT contacts ... either 24VAC or 120VAC to fire it ... but again, no delay ...

I suspect that he wants the circ to run AFTER a burner cycle, to purge the heat left in the boiler...

 

well i adjusted the firing thing back to 10 sec. but he did tell me after the install that i could play with diff if i wanted to. But did change it to his original 8. And i said should this be turned back to auto and he said no, not until the delay relay was in. He actually wanted my feedback on how it was going and asked specific questions about the DHW and other cycling as well as certain room issues i had. But on Christmas eve i was desperate to stop the severe short cycling and the booming. I had no idea what was going on for 2 hours. Starting/stopping for 1-2 seconds just didnt seem that smart a thing to let go on for a while but if the 260 will learn and stop that, then ill be happy.

Is there any chance that sensor on the pipe is in the wrong place? i just though about that...all this on/off is based on the temp there.

soooo you're pretty much saying he's clueless and that's not a delay relay? Maybe thats' why it didnt work lol. He tested all sorts of electrical connections but kept saying something wouldnt energize a coil or something like that. When it was open i could see a dial showing 1 to 10 on it but i really didnt look that closely but just assumed that meant delay minutes.

that's definitely not how he explained it to me. You know me, asked someone multiple times how this thing will work And every time he told me the circ and the burner fire at the same time now and that's not always necessary...BUT there may be enough heat in there that the circ can turn on and use the residual heat and IF the demand is then satisfied, it wont fire the boiler because the sensor will say demand met. I do believe this was meant to stop the sometimes short cycling and also to make the boiler colder so when it does finally start to run, it runs longer. He gave an example of a 15 min run time being efficent vs the few min it is doing now sometimes. And based on my personal observation of the target temp being met sometimes within 10 seconds, and the boiler not needing to be fired but short cycles 2 seconds, i do believe he's doing what's right to cure my issue.

Though now that i read your statement..i do wonder why he wouldnt just use the residual heat 'right after' the heating cycle and instead he's waiting for things to 'cool down' and ask for more heat, before extracting the heat. Is there any chance the relay is designed to do what you said he may want to do, but he doesnt know that's what it does? IE he thinks it's purging upon heat call, not letting it run after the burner turns off. Either way, the thing wouldnt let the boiler fire yesterday at all so he bypassed it.

and im kinda irritated that the new 85 70W nozzle still 'boomed' for me. Virtually every start up he did while he was here was quieter..i guess he will have to sit here with me one afternoon and drink a beer and listen lol.

edit, i had to kick it up to 10 diff again..the constant on off as it was trying to heat me up 1 degree in the house was driving me nuts

 

No... don't be putting words in my mouth! It's big enough already. All I said was that is not a delay relay. I looked up the specs on it, and it's just a straight relay... since you said there's a dial inside, I'm gonna look again though, cuz as I said before, not everybody knows everything ... some ppl are savants.

OK, I looked... see for yourself ... anything about a time delay in there?

RIBU1C Relay data sheet

 

We need to know if there is anything hiding in that electrical box next to the relay...

 

A post-purge would not necessarily screw up the tekmar, but it would potentially jack the supplied temperature well above the supply target high diff. Not really an ideal use of the residual heat to minimize boiler demands.

However, a pre-purge would make the setup basically like a fixed-first-stage, 2-stage system. That would be effective at getting residual heat into the system and potentially satisfying a boiler demand.

Given how the installer has all kinds of tekmar stuff in his own home, the latter approach would not surprise me.

 

I can't see this happening... The boiler supply temps aren't going to go higher, since the burner has stopped adding BTUs to the standing water in the boiler vessel.

Running the circulator longer would just purge the 4.8 gallons of water held in the boiler, and the temperature of that water wouldn't be higher then when the burner stopped running. It should start dropping when enough of the colder return starts to cool the boiler.

My circulators keep running long after a burner cycle ends, and I've never observed the supply temperatures to rise at any point in the P/S system. I usually have about 30 degrees of recovery, until the TV shuts down the flow.

If you shut of the burner, the supply temps don't rise as a result.
Pete

 

Yeah, yer only gonna get 'heat soak' if the circ stops also ... keep runnin' the circ and the temp will slowly decline...

My circs run on a temp control, and it takes about 10 minutes for the water to drop from 150 to 120 ... that's a pretty fair amount of heat left over in that cast iron ...

I guess the PID in the TEK would have to learn to cut the burner off a bit early to prevent rooms from overshooting...

Is the optional indoor sensor installed?

 

ill try to remember to take a pic of what's inside the electric box but i dont see a way to take that relay apart and see whats inside it. But i swear thats where i saw the dial of 1-10

If my recollection is good, he has 2 tek 256s in his house and he told me he talks almost daily with tekmar about various issues. So i'm pretty sure he will work this out...eventually. Though i'm still perplexed why he only set this on 16 diff instead of auto.

Can you give me a synopsis as to what a 2 staged system is? As an aside, i have seen the temp on front of the boiler read over 140 while the temp in the pipes is only 80 so the boiler does hold heat in a while. And he told me i have about 100 gallons in my system so maybe the 4.3 in the boiler that are hot are all it needs to heat up the house

no indoor sensor involved...wiring in my crawlspace isn't fun and with the walls being plaster, dropping lines from the attic isnt EZ either. (those horizontal strips in the walls etc) And as much as i thought i wanted the indoor sensor, i'd have to read up on the advantages because i really dont see how it's any different than my thermometer calling for heat.

10 min to drop wow! Id love that. with my current diff of 20 degrees i've watched it take as little as 3-4 and maybe even shorter. (i guess i have a 'fast' circ that really pumps it out. But thats when the circ and burner start up and i get that 'whoosh' of hot water and the burner only then fires for 2 seconds.

And dont ask me why, but i have a gut feeling overshooting a temp is impossible in my house. I guess since it took well over 2 hours to recover from 65 to 67 the day he was here and it didnt get above 67 at all is one reason i think this.

 

I'm making this a separate post because it's something i thought about a lot. Is where the tekmar sensor (now insulated for those that dont remember) placed on the pipes a good place for it? As much as i sit her complaining about all the short cycles etc it got me to wondering if maybe i'm not getting 'the best reading' from the sensor being there and maybe it's a spot that cools down/heats up too fast.

i do realize you have told me that there should be longer line in front of the scoop and my rattle is positively caused by the circ too close to the elbow there. But other than that, is there anything wrong with how he designed it?

the other thing i'm ashamed to admit is i still do NOT understand how the cold water gets back to the boiler. He explained it to me at least 3 times but when i follow all the pipes to me it seems like all the water is being mixed together all the time and there's no direction to anything. (or is this what primary/secondary protection is?) And seems like there is no 'direct route' for the return water to head right into the boiler! So i dont know how the water is 'smart enough' that the cold makes it back to the boiler and the hot makes it directly to the input side of the house. the only thing i can definitely understand is if the water is always supposed to be 'balanced' and all the water be the same temp all the time. Hope that makes sense

 

There's two pumps on your system now.

The SYSTEM pump circulates water around the heating circuit, regardless of what the boiler circuit/pump is doing.

The BOILER pump circulates water around the boiler circuit, regardless of what the system circuit/pump is doing.

'Mixing' of the two flows occurs between those two closely spaced tee fittings.

If BOTH pumps are on, and they both pump the exact same amount of water, there will be NO FLOW BETWEEN THE TEES. All the water in the system will flow out the supply of the boiler, into the system, and back in the return.

If the system pump is flowing MORE than the boiler, there will be SOME flow between those tees, in the direction of the system flow, and a portion of that flow will go through the boiler.

If the boiler pump is flowing MORE than the system, there will still be SOME flow between those tees, but in the reverse direction.

Remember that for flow to occur, there has to be a PRESSURE DIFFERENCE. That pressure difference is created by the pumps.

Also, what goes into a TEE fitting must come OUT of the tee fitting.

"Become the water Grasshopper"

 

This diagram illustrates where the water goes if the system if flowing more than the boiler:



At the left tee, 10 GPM goes in, 8 goes down, and 2 goes across.

At the right tee, 2 goes in, 8 goes in, 10 comes out...

The situation is a bit different if the boiler pump is flowing more. In that case, the flow between the tees is reversed.

If the flows are equal, there is no flow between the tees.

 

Almost forgot ...

The indoor sensor is NOT the same as a thermostat.

All a thermostat will do is tell the 260 that the house wants heat.

It can't tell the 260 what the temperature in the house is.

The indoor sensor CAN.

With this extra information, the 260 is better able to decide what to do.

 

I have assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that there will be some hot water in the boiler side piping that could make it into the space heating circuits. Say the target is 120 and the boiler is 180.

Whatever way it's done, before or after, having a purge into the system should help things.

 

i read the post 2x and will read it a few more. The diagram and knowing the pumps flow at different rates sorta makes sense..but i need more time to digest it (especially how the hot water can possible come up from the boiler, then down and to the T, where it apparently mixes with returning water, but then also gets fed right back to the supply line to the baseboards...I think ill set up a lawnchair and study it tonight lol)

I understand what you wrote but not what you said. Even if we did the indoor sensor he told me it would be in my living room since 75% of my life is in there. The living room is right next to the dining room and the thermostat is on the dining room wall on the living room side.

to my layman mind, when my thermostat says it dropped from 67 to 66, turn on! it seems like the same thing as the tekmar sensor saying it's 66 in here, not 67, turn on!

can you give me an example using my current data? At approx 40 outside the boiler target temp is around 130 I think. And the Diff is on +- 10 right now so 120-140 is the range.

IF i had the indoor sensor, what may be different in how the tekmar controls the boiler? if you say it will stop short cycling ill get one now (sorry had to insert that joke)

 

No, no, no!! The thermostat is bang-bang, off on!!! When the thermostat calls for heat, the Tekmar has no idea how heat is needed to heat the room!!! You could have opened all the doors and the room could be 67 degrees, 30 degrees, or 45 degrees. All the Tekmar knows that the thermostat says its time to heat the room. You're also dealing with the hystersis of the heat anticipator in the stat, one or two degrees there.

The sensor knows the exact room temperature, and the Tekmar then knows how much energy is needed to heat the room that number of degrees, based on past history, outside temps, and indoor temps. Big, big difference!! And even more so if you let the indoor sensor have complete control over the thermostas.

 

hmmm having the sensor control my thermostat..i dont quite get that. does that mean if the stat stays at 67 but the sensor says it's 66, that the boiler will turn on?

And how would setback work with the sensor then? Or can it even?

-------------------------------------

different topic, i'm reading thru the boiler manual now and it says all burners are shipped with the nozzle for the sld375 installed. The others are in the burner carton. So im wondering if he just never changed the original nozzle out? or even if he did, that was bad too and i'm actually on the 3rd one Either way, one in there now booms just like the old one so something else needs to be changed out again.

then i see in the book it says the nozzle should be .85 x 80B and i do know he just swapped to a 70W and the air is supposed to be 3.25 originally and i'm pretty sure he dialed it to 2.75..he wrote on the side of the boiler, ill have to check when i get home. Head reading too.

 

got home and heard a click...the boiler was ready to turn on..so i rushed into the utility room to do my diligence and 1st thing i smelled was oil so this isnt firing right for sure.

Then the circ fired up and it the burner kicked on as it should....got up to temp...kicked off then i timed it with my watch...35 seconds later it was down in temp so fired up the circ again, the temp got up to snuff and when the thing burner went to ignite, was up to max temp so turned off after a second.

i took off that box cover and nothing under it..so took the relay apart too..what he must have done is exchange them and bring the faulty one back to the shop because i'm 100% sure what he had in there before was a dial 1 to 10. this must be just a temp thing to make it work until he gets back. So that mystery is solved!

Ill call him monday AM to complain about the oil smell. I have another silly question. Even though i'm happy with the even heat i have in the house, is it possible the initial temp setpoint was set wrong and maybe that's part of the issue?

oh and it's .75 air and 2.5 head on the 85 x 70w (hope the marker comes off the side of the unit..do you guys normally write on it?)

 

Let me rephrase. The thermostats are set a few degrees higher than the maximum temperature you'd want.

The indoor sensor controls the temperature, and the Telkmar then tries to keep the Occupied temp that is programmed into the Tekmar. Setback would be done via a switch or timer on the Occupied/Unoccupied input on the Tekmar control. The setback temperature would be the unoccupied temperature that is programmed into the Tekmar. The thermostats basically do nothing.

 

One other piece of data that a t'stat can not provide, and a sensor can...

THE RATE OF CHANGE ... how fast the building is heating up or cooling down. This is very important to a PID (Proportional Integral Derivative) based system such as the 260 ...

You wanna get confused even more than you already are? Get out yer Calculus books, you'll need them... study up on PID controllers.

This WIKI article is a good start.

PID controller Wiki

By the way... the cruise control in your car is a PID controller.

Huh... there's another thing they tried to teach us in school that we thought we would never need to know... who ever thought we'd have to add and subtract in real life?

 

Rate of change, and also the amount of change needed. The Tekmar sees a heat call from the stat, and doesn't know if it needs to heat the room by 2 degrees or 20 degrees. But before you start worrying about adding more to the system, get what's already there running to your satisfaction. The sensor can be added next week or next year! You have a lot invested now without throwing more money into add ons. You will have a nice system wiht what you have now when the bugs are worked out.

Pete

Pete

 

This guy is having some serious problems setting up your burner, he may be a great installation guy, but his burner solutions of throwing different nozzles to solve a real bad burn pattern is off the charts.

Call your oil company have one of those guys dial in your burner. As for the short cycling, are you saying the tekmar is no longer calling the burner? Or is the burner kicking off on high limit? Id take a hard look at the temp sensor and its location on the piping.

My first post , hope I added something.

EDIT: Is that temp sensor on the supply or the return piping?

 

the target temp plus the diff is the number being hit when there is a startup of the circ when there is a call for heat..so in the 15 sec it takes the burner before it fires, the upper diff limit was reached and thus the burner actually ignites, says whoa we are up to that upper diff, and turns immediately off since the temp has been achieved. And conversely sometimes the temp on that sensor can drop within 1 min to the minimum and thus necessitate another firing. It can be a nasty cycle sometimes.

Many times in this thread i wondered about if the sensor is in the right place..per the pic below you can see on the right the pipe coming up from the boiler, go thru 3 elbows then drop down 3-4 inches to that T... from the left comes the return from the baseboards and to the right is the line that leads to the scoop and of course then supply to the baseboards.

And i'm still trying to understand the post a few above this one about how the water 'knows to go' that way and how it's all mixed together but let's not get off on that tangent. Thats my personal mental blockage

for the fun of it i checked my tekmar stuff and here's the data on that..maybe something set up wrong there? I never change anything with occ/unocc so whatever he put it on is where it is and i dont eve know what wwsd means.

occ room 70
unocc 65
otdr design 0
terminal unit 5
boil indr 70
boil dsgn 167
max 172
min 125
diff 24 (MY setting yesterday to stop the short cycling, he had 16)
wwsd occ 70
wwsd unocc 60