Water boiling in hot water system


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Old 12-14-09, 12:35 PM
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Water boiling in hot water system

Hi, new member here. I have a hot water system with 2 zones and a third loop which goes thru a hydro heater, this is a 32 year old fireplace boiler that was installed while the house was built. It has worked fine for 32 years( 3 or 4 cordss of wood every year) - until I put in a new New Yorker oil fired boiler cold start system with 3 new circulators. Now when either zone thermostat calls for heat, the water in the hydro heater will make steam unless the fire is very low. Maximum water temperature in the oil furnace is set to 180. In the old boiler, I would often bump it up to 200 in very cold weather with no problems in the hydro heater. The only difference that I can think of in the new hookup is that the 2 zone circulators are now pushing and were previously pulling. This was done with the advice of heating contractor.
I have observed that the return water from the 2 zones is now nearly as hot as the feed side. With the old system, there was a much more noticeable difference to the touch.

I did bleed the system 3 times to be sure it wasn't an air problem.

I have 4 cords of wood outside that I would like to use and am stumped as to what to do next.

I would sure appreciate any suggestions.
 
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Old 12-14-09, 01:01 PM
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As always I am going to ask for pictures of the installation, lots of pictures. To post pictures you need to first upload the pictures to a photo hosting site such as photobucket.com or villagephotos.com. and then post the public URLs for the pictures (or album) here. More pictures are always better than fewer. Please have CLEAR pictures and have both close up pictures and ones from a far enough distance that we can see how the various parts are interconnected.
 
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Old 12-14-09, 03:23 PM
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Yeah, pictures...

A quick read through tells me that somehow with the installation of the new boiler, whatever was done to the piping screwed up the flow through the system... there's not enough flow if you are making steam... and possibly air trapped somehow...

Hopefully we can make some sense of it when we see it.
 
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Old 12-15-09, 05:23 AM
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Taking pictures

Hi, thanks for the response.
I will take lots of pictures tonight, thanks for the response.
Last night I replaced the new Taco circulator in the hydroheater circuit with the old one that was originally on there, mainly to eliminate the possiblilty of a bad new circulator. Didn't have time to build a fire though.
 
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Old 12-16-09, 08:00 AM
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Hydro heater boiling pictures are on photobucket

Hello again,
I posted 5 pictures on photobucket.
The 2 heat zone circulators each have 3 settings lo, med, hi
I have them each set to low in an attempt to slow the flow thru the baseboard heat enough to cool the water more.

Pictures by jhal1234 - Photobucket
 
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Old 12-16-09, 03:05 PM
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This ain't gonna be easy... them pipefitters musta had HUGE arms to twist them pipes in a knot like that!

Seriously though, in order to make sense of this, we might actually need a drawn out diagram of the piping... might not be able to see what we need to see in the pics... I'll study them more later on tonight.
 
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Old 12-16-09, 06:32 PM
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Originally Posted by handsonit
The 2 heat zone circulators each have 3 settings lo, med, hi I have them each set to low in an attempt to slow the flow thru the baseboard heat enough to cool the water more.
That is a falacy. A higher flow rate will transfer more Btu/hr from the baseboards - if that is what you want to achieve.
 

Last edited by NJT; 12-16-09 at 07:14 PM.
 

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