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Posted by Sean on June 02, 2008 at 23:32:39:
In Reply to: our problems - part 1 posted by Sean on June 02, 2008 at 23:31:56:
Then we replaced our 20 year old gas water heater with the Gold PLUS 40 indirect unit. It worked well in producing plenty of hot water. I also noticed that the boiler, in the process of heating the domestic water, would reach 170 degrees or so. After reading through posts here and other online resources it seemed to me that either our boiler was too large or, more likely, we have too much radiation. The house does have large radiators, and large supply and return piping.
A week or so after the hot water heater was installed, I also noticed that the radiators would start to get pretty warm even when the house thermostat was turned all the way back. During the process of heating the water in the indirect tank, it was pretty clear that hot water was convecting up through the circulator even though the system was wired so that that circulator was not being powered at the time. The system was working the way it originally was designed via gravity.
So I contacted our HVAC contractor, explained my concerns and what I thought the problems might be (too much radiation, oversized boiler, hot water creeping to the radiators when it was not wanted). They stated they were going to contact Weil-McLain and get back to me. It took a while. Finally they told me they would "add a solenoid valve to stop the migration of the heat during domestic water calls, make the aqua stat hold the set limit of the boiler, and add a relay to make the tstat work the circulating pump, thus maintaining 180 degrees at all times". And I was told that "that should take care of any condensation problems and give you more efficiency." The maintaining 180 degrees at all times sounded off to me but I am not an engineer.