Andrew Pfeiffer
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- Jan 18, 2024
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Hello, asking for some input before I start tearing into things and maybe making it harder for my future boiler install.
A little back story - I live in the middle of no-where Alaska, about 2 hours south of Fairbanks., I am not a plumber, I am not an electrician - but I worked as a mechanic in the Army or 20+ and I know my way around tools. I have a primary boiler (oil) that I knew I would have to replace sooner or later. Its a Burnham 5A, and the 4th section developed a small crack near the top Jan 1. I also have a wood boiler that is backup, and all it does is supply hot water to the oil boiler. Unfortunately, I discovered that I cannot heat the house with only the wood boiler - there is no bypassing the oil boiler right now, and the zone control is based off the oil boiler. The lines that come from the wood boiler have a lot of space to tie into them, and there is a good location to place a new boiler in between the 2 right now.
The oil boiler has a domestic water feed to keep the water pressure in the water pressure in the heating system maintained. There is no cutoff valve prior to the inlet of the oil boiler or at the outlet side of it. If work has to be done, it gets turned off, all the inlet zone valves closes, then you manually close the outlet side of the zones. Then the boiler can be drained. - draining it also drains the lines connecting the oil and wood boiler.
I want to put a cutoff valve immediately before and after the oil boiler - so It can be isolated. I will need to put in a bypass with a shut off valve in there, this should allow me to run the wood boiler as primary heat. I also need to figure out what calls for heat on the oil boiler and fires up the burner. My second thought on that is to keep the main circulation pump on, the zone control on, but the burner unplugged.
That should fix the bypass and let the wood boiler run by itself.
As far as prepping the system for a new install, I am planning on cutting the inlet / outlet lines connecting the boilers, installing a T junction with a valve on each side of the T. The "new" line will just go out a foot or so for the installers to use when the new boiler is installed.
Does this make sense, or am I making this more complicated than I need to? I am putting a few pictures in here that might shed light on it - old vs new. Not sure if I used the symbols correctly, I googled symbols and used those.
A little back story - I live in the middle of no-where Alaska, about 2 hours south of Fairbanks., I am not a plumber, I am not an electrician - but I worked as a mechanic in the Army or 20+ and I know my way around tools. I have a primary boiler (oil) that I knew I would have to replace sooner or later. Its a Burnham 5A, and the 4th section developed a small crack near the top Jan 1. I also have a wood boiler that is backup, and all it does is supply hot water to the oil boiler. Unfortunately, I discovered that I cannot heat the house with only the wood boiler - there is no bypassing the oil boiler right now, and the zone control is based off the oil boiler. The lines that come from the wood boiler have a lot of space to tie into them, and there is a good location to place a new boiler in between the 2 right now.
The oil boiler has a domestic water feed to keep the water pressure in the water pressure in the heating system maintained. There is no cutoff valve prior to the inlet of the oil boiler or at the outlet side of it. If work has to be done, it gets turned off, all the inlet zone valves closes, then you manually close the outlet side of the zones. Then the boiler can be drained. - draining it also drains the lines connecting the oil and wood boiler.
I want to put a cutoff valve immediately before and after the oil boiler - so It can be isolated. I will need to put in a bypass with a shut off valve in there, this should allow me to run the wood boiler as primary heat. I also need to figure out what calls for heat on the oil boiler and fires up the burner. My second thought on that is to keep the main circulation pump on, the zone control on, but the burner unplugged.
That should fix the bypass and let the wood boiler run by itself.
As far as prepping the system for a new install, I am planning on cutting the inlet / outlet lines connecting the boilers, installing a T junction with a valve on each side of the T. The "new" line will just go out a foot or so for the installers to use when the new boiler is installed.
Does this make sense, or am I making this more complicated than I need to? I am putting a few pictures in here that might shed light on it - old vs new. Not sure if I used the symbols correctly, I googled symbols and used those.
