The Glitch & The Fix

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Because the price of fuel oil has increased dramatically over the last several months, an installer with lots of experience in installing conventional oil-fired boilers is asked to install a pellet-fired boiler.

Imagine that you, an independent heating pro, have been asked to inspect this system because the owner is claiming it doesn’t deliver sufficient heat on cold days.

A technician installs a system to provide domestic hot water to a high end house with several bathrooms. Can you spot at least five details that are incorrect, and recommend how to fix this situation? 

A heating pro is asked to retrofit a pellet-fired boiler to an existing distribution system consisting of older cast iron radiators, iron piping and an oil-fired boiler.

An installer is asked to add a monobloc-style air-to-water heat pump to an existing hydronic system that is supplied by a mod/con boiler.

A technician encounters a system installed in the 1980s when radiant floor heating was relatively new in North America.

A homeowner hires a heating contractor to upgrade his propane-fired cast-iron boiler to a mod/con boiler. The cast-iron boiler is only 15 years old and in good shape. 

A multiple boiler system using sectional cast-iron boilers has been configured to supply two loads as shown below. A “crossover pipe” is installed in case the flow rate in the primary circuit is different from the flow through the boilers. There are several piping errors in this proposed design. Can you spot at least five of them?

Sometimes multiple mistakes show up in small portions of hydronic systems.