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A trip to ND turned up this boiler installation when a man asked if I wanted to take a look at his son's heating system. I will point out that I do them a little differently.



Back-up Heat Source:

Fan/Coil Unit:

Main Circulating Pump (permanent wiring):

Primary Heat Source Pump (temporary wiring):

Domestic Hot Water (also permanently wired):

Hillbilly engineering.

Good Lord!!

Honestly, could this get any rougher?

That car radiator is the finishing touch though, IMO.

That sure looks both a mess and a hazard, but it needen't have been like that. These pics show that you can fit an amazing amount of equipment into a small space, make it easy to service yet still create a nice neat job - with a lot of planning
The fir-ply backing board shown here is just 8' x 4'
The system is fed with hot water from a separate boiler room, fired by oil.

[click to enlarge pics]



The whole board: including main 20A isolator, 3 variable output 100W circulation pumps, 3 motorized valves, 2 mechanical mixer-valves [85deg C to 40 deg C for underfloor heating, blue caps ], 2 x duplex breaker panels, 2 main wiring boxes, a digital programmer, 2 wireless programmer receivers, a top-up valve and water gage to maintain the system at 20 psi, 3 x 12v halogen luminaire transformers, domestic hot and cold water pipes and isolator jacks, basin and shower gravity drain, feeds to heated floor hydronic manifolds. All copper pipework 7/8", flow and return, is soldered or compression jointed, with every maintainable component isolatable by 3/4" ball valves for servicing - plus a work light and a recep. The cupboard [it's under the staircase] also contains a 2kW x 150 liter horizontal electric domestic water heater [out of view], the ironing board, all our best china in a cabinet, the fridge, [which backs in from the kitchen] - and our vacuum cleaner!



Close up of programmers. The upper digital unit time controls 85deg C water to a conventional radiator circuit, [ with stats on each rad], feeding 3 beds, a lounge, a [redundant] kitchen and a bathroom. The 2 white receivers control two underfloor heating zones at 40deg C. serving about 2000 sq ft on two floors, lounge, kitchen, a utility room, 1 x downstairs khazi. 2 beds, 2 bathrooms upstairs. Their programmers are freestanding room models, controlling times and temperatures as required. The breaker unit at right contains the EDF relay which switches the water heater on only during low tariff periods - I can overide it if needed.



Part view of pipework, sub-junction boxes etc. and the main manifolds to the floor heating. This system has been running now for about 2 years, the dust is from finish sanding of woodwork and sheetrock in adjacent rooms. As you can see from pic 1, I still have to finish the oak wainscotting and frame out the door. I've been remodelling this house for years - so no rush!
The green verdigris on some of the pipes is from the special flux I used to solder the pipework with lead-free stuff - I obviously didn't wash it all off properly!

Some people don't care about being neat:

Alan, I've never seen a controller for a boiler like that. I usually get a box of spare parts that the plumber left behind.

What is the boiler like?

I remember one truly amazing Boiler Room that was the complete opposite of the one above.

It was the Central Plant located in a Catholic hospital in Kankakee, Illinois.
The Operating Engineer was one of the Sisters.

I had heard the expression "you could eat off the floor" but I had never seen an example before. I have since seen some patient-care areas of hospitals that weren't as clean as she kept her Plant.

Even the glass on the gauges and the thermometers were spotless. If there was ever a leak in there, you'd sure find it in an instant.

I have two systems running off the same boiler, a conventional water radiator zone and 2 zones of hydronic underfloor.
It's really a very simple system to control. Each programmer sends a signal that heat is required to a motorised valve. This has a relay built in, so that backfeeds don't occur. The relay contact starts the pump [circulator] and sends a signal to the boiler to fire up. When you have three sets of controls running in tandem, the wiring gets a bit complicated so I put in all in two large junction boxes. As you can see I used European type choc-blocks, and annotated each circuit for faulting out. This pic was taken during trials, hence the thermometers.



The radiator circuit is run, hardwired, by what is basically a digital clock, although it has some features like on/off, day, 24 hours etc. Temperature is controlled by tweaking each radiator's thermostatic valve. The underfloor system has 2 wireless programmers. These send signals to open the relevant motorised valve. The programmers can be set to temperature and have 4 timed programmes to suit lifestyles plus a customisable option. Two temperature levels can be preset, for example at night we drop the temperatures by about 8F. The units are user friendly.



This is my boiler, running a pressure jet burner on diesel, although I am currently building a vegetable oil fueled burner. It is jetted for about 20kW. I run it pressurised at about 20psi. The fluid is water/glycol [antifreeze] plus inhibitors, hence the hand-pump for refilling at pressure after mending leaks . The red ball is a diaphragm type pressure bottle which accomodates fluid expansion.

Looks like my place, though I wouldn't leave the cover off the circuit breaker panel.

This is my favourite boiler room. The electrical engineer forgot the MCC and put the fire pump controller in the wrong room. After these were added the mechanical engineer decided to put three heat pumps in the room. Add in geo-thermal and it's hard to take pictures.

From the door:


The East Walkway:


The other end of the East Walkway:


The West walkway:


The other end of the West walkway:


Fire Pump Controller:


The boilers:


Behind the boilers:

Alan,
that is a nice neat job..but don't they sell something in a box that will do the same thing ..ok maybe not. But seriously suppose something were to happen to you would your wife or who ever know how to keep the heat going? or suppose you try to sell your house alot of folks may be turned away by all these " upgrades".

Wirenuts,

Alan's system isn't as complicated as it looks. The timers and thermostats are standard devices over here (Alan's location is given as France, but I see some U.K. parts in there too) and everybody is used to using them. Most people wouldn't worry about the rest of it as long as the heat comes on when they need it!

Plumbing wise, with underfloor heating becoming more and more popular, that sort of arrangement is not unusual these days. It's built up from several standard setups and any decent plumber and electrician would be able to maintain and repair it. It being neatly laid out and accessible like that would be considered a luxury, that sort of thing is usually hidden in a dark, cramped hole somewhere.

I see one, the switch:
https://www.electrical-photos.com/showphoto.php/photo/1013
Who can spot more?

Yup! France and in the middle of nowhere! Wirenuts- as Adam says, it's not as complex as it looks and all the parts are conventional Eu heating components. And it is now possible to buy a 'pack' for an underfloor zone, you get the same bits and they charge you over a hundred sobs to connect them with pipes. I can do that, gissa job!

What you see is three separate heating systems running on one board- a conventional 7 radiator setup and two underfloor heating zones. Plus all the other stuff it turned out to be convenient to locate under the stairs. Zoning is only necessary if you want to have different temperatures in different areas. My wife suffers the normal hormone probs of a lady of her generation, a-hem, so we keep the bedroom cooler than the sitting room. This avoids me waking half frozen at 3am with the duvet on top of the dog! I also have a full set of drawings and could knock up an idiots guide fast if needed. Also, I hope to be moving outa here in a box so it's not my main worry! I built this for me, the next owner can light a fire if he's cold!

Basically, each area is served by its own programmer, which signals a motorised 2-port valve which controls water flow. Each of these signals a zone circulator to start and also fires up the boiler with a non backfeeding signal. The boiler has its own circulator fitted as a booster as its a long house. All pretty conventional. The boiler and burner are French, due solely to the weight and carriage costs. Every serviceable component has ball or gate valves either side, so any breakdowns can be serviced by a swap out. In an emergency, I can rob the first floor components to keep the ground floor running - [ and I have done this once, before I bought a spare MV and circulator].

All the parts are well known to both French/Brit plumbers, even though I bought most of it in the UK. The 20A UK isolator [ CE Approved] was fitted because a neon-indicated switch like this does not exist here- French electricians would simply fit a panel and breaker, which IMHO is not good practice for regular switching. All the 22mm pipe is British as the French stuff snaps in the benders, it being fully hard.

Tex, In fact most of what you see was bought in the UK. This is because mail order internet is faster than the local tortoises, better quality, far lower prices and has no quibble guarantees. Germany is the best place for the latest oil pumps at keen prices, for instance. I also plan ahead and buy stuff in bulk on my visits to blighty. I can get parts like burner nozzles from New York faster and cheaper- [ would you believe US$4.00 for a nozzle costing US$22.00 here but none in stock?] - than 2 km up the road + the guy I deal with in NY falls over himself to be helpful and professional and he speaka my lingo, near as dammit! It's a sad fact, but French 'guarantees' and customer service are terrible, and I hesitate to buy anything with more than 2 working parts locally.

From the heating systems that I see, I think that no one cares if it can be maintained. Around here, a fairly common set-up would have an outdoor temp sensor to control boiler flame level (or at least output temperature) with domestic water heating having priority and overriding the outdoor sensor, in-floor zones and forced air zones interlocked to prevent simultaneous heating and cooling, and in the case of potable water being used in the heating system - a circulator that moves water through the system during non-heating periods.

Boilers are generally serviced by plumbers, anyway. I only get called after they've changed all the parts and announced to the customer that it quit working after 3 years because it was wired wrong.

Here is our crazy setup we inherited from the previous owner when my grandmother bought the house in 2005:


The heart of the system is a standard natural gas water heater, I guess 200l. It supplies hot water to both shoerws, bathroom sinks and the kitchen sink, as well as heat via the green circulation pump at the very top of the picture. Further to the left there is the heat exchanger (silver box) that separates potable water and heat.

There are 3 heating zones. Two supply different parts of the house with heat using copper pipes snaking through the brick walls (rather than radiators).
The third "zone" is one long run of straight pipe that runs through the whole perimeter of the house just above the floor, with the intent of battling rising damp by heating the walls and evaporating any moisture inside the walls (so I was told).

The drying circuit is driven by the left-hand pump and controled via a thermostatic valve.

The two heating loops are conencted to manifolds, red and blue, indicating hot and cold but perfectly mixed up. The pump (pretty much hidden by the manifolds) just pumped hot water into the cold manifold, bypassing the entire loop.

In short dry words that means the whole system worked merely by accident. We since had the heating loop pump removed and the original drying loop pump connected to serve both loops.

The pumps used to run 24/7/365 and the only means of control were two thermostatic valves and the hot water temperature. We connected the pumps to a timeclock and only run the heat for roughly 2-3 hours a day depending on the time of the year, which hopefully cuts down on our gas bills drastically. Note how the original genius just hard wired a power strip and plugged in the pumps...

Eventually we might wind up adding radiators though I guess. The wall heati system is nice as the walls get an even temperature, but it takes at least a full day to get the house warm. That's intolerable for a weekend home during the cold season. We usually rely on portable electric heaters and the wood fired tiled kitchen stove until the gas heat picks up.

It's a little colder than that, here. We also can't use a normal water heater because they won't stand up to the constant circulation and fail after a few years. It gets down to -40c for a couple days every year and -30c isn't unusual for a week or two. For the guys from southern US, Fahrenheit and Celsius are the same at -40. It's about the same weather as North Dakota.

We often have a main circulating pump that just circulates through the boiler (hot to cold), and the remote heating loops draw from, and return to, the main loop. Is that what you're describing? The specs I read were that the two sides of the remote loop must be within inches of each other. I think it's to stop the return temperature from being too cold and causing condensation of flue gasses.

I understand about the time it takes to warm up a system with a lot of mass. In-floor heat has the same problem. It also has a cool down problem. Forget about night set-back on the thermostat. It's a definite draw-back.

twh/tex;

Boilers start-ups on a poorly designed system can mean a long wait to get any heat out! It is even possible to stall a boiler indefinitely and it could be literally raining in your boiler firebox, esp firing nat gas, which will make 8 times the weight of the gas burned as water! If that can't get out of your stack as steam 'cos its too cold.... . The answer is a valve between the hot outlet and the cold inlet ports on the boiler. This bypasses hot water back to the boiler inlet at start. An automatic model will drop out when you hit the target boiler temperature and will respond to load too. Modern lightweight fabricated boilers will corrode out pdq if run cold for too long- cast iron is more tolerant.
Here's one automatic adjustable bypass valve type:
http://ecc.emea.honeywell.com/products/ecatdata/pg_du145.html

These cost about =US$45 in France.

I used a cheap manual bypass-valve, [set at 10% bypass by experiment], but then my boiler is a big iron-lump!

I'm running set-back with no probs. We have to wait 5 hours to get the floor hot from cold [1 time per year, September], but I have also got reversible A/C and a woodstove for backup. Once the 12 tons of concrete floor slab heat up, a 2 or 3 hour am burn raises the slab to give us 20C [68F] for the next 24 hours, but we do live near the Altantic and usually have mild winters, unlike Continental places like Vienna or ND. We target 20C [68F] from 6am through 11pm, then program minima 16C [60F] at night, and these temps are remarkably stable. The boiler has never fired at night, even at -15C = 0F outside - the slab never cools fast enough.

Underfloor will never work properly without the investment in insulation. [ min 20cm = 8" Rockwool or equivalent, - I also put 100mm of extruded PS under the slab - and draft sealing, double glazing etc, investments with a payback of 25% or more on capital]. It can't cope with rapid temperature variations or too high a demand. You must limit the heat requirement to less than 100W per sq meter of floor area, for no underfloor can emit more than that without broiling the dog!

To reduce losses further, I fitted a heat recuperating ventilation system to run 24 7 365. Then I got the first summer's POCO bill after lashing out $300+ on CFLs! A 100W vent fan 24/7 = over 200kwh per quarter with her indoors having all the doors and windows thrown open! Now it only runs in winter! Live and learn.

Tex: Difficult to see, even blown up, but have you got one of these between the boiler ports hot and cold? It's a mechanical bypass [vanne melangeuse suedeoise- never seen one in the UK], with a dial indicating the amount of boiler hot to cold bleed-back. They come in 3 port [voie] versions too. They do tend to gum up solid, so adjusting the bypass is often impossible after a few years.

http://www.ebaneo.com/gamme-1820-vanne-melangeuse-4-voies.php

That was my point.

The automatic valves that I've seen are all related to regulating water temperature into the slab. The plumbers are following the manufacturers instructions when the use a pump on a main loop, but tmtowtdi (there's more than one way to do it).

The plumbers I work with keep the water temp going into the slab at about 120F. Higher than that damages the concrete, they say. The heat loss from the slab keeps the surface temperature at about room temperature, but I suppose if the dog was too stupid to move, it would get a little warmer under him. I'll keep the 100w/m sq in mind. Thanks for that.

The recuperating ventilation system, called air to air heat exchangers here, are required in our building code. It replaces exhaust fans in bathrooms, laundry rooms and kitchens and is interlocked with the forced air system. Everything helps.

I'm not a fan of CFL's, although I use them. LED's are way cooler.

No, we don't. If I find the folder I'm going to scan the original schematics. The boiler loop is just boiler - heat exchanger - pump - boiler and a couple of ball cocks.

The heating loop didn't get any circulation at all, except for gravity, the pump shorted out the whole heating system.

The whole thing is non-electric, except for the pumps...

To clarify one thing: this is a weekend home. When it's occupied we set the timeclock to permanent operation and back to 2-3 hours a day when we leave.
Since the house is very small (65 sq. m. living area) the system does keep the house warm, even in -20C weather (slightly below 0°F).
The system probably ran 365 days a year from 1998 when it was installed until 2008 when we put it on a timeclock. Apparently the previous owner kept the house at a toasty 20C year-round because she firmly believed in the necessity of doing this to keep the house dry. It does work, but I guess she'd better spent the money on a damp-proof course in the brick walls rather than on gas.

actually i work at one of the better boiler rooms, the portland vetrans administration hospital, the boiler room floors are spotless, the space is well lit, the three 25 year old cleaver brooks boilers look brand new, and the piping is well marked, also there is no junk piled up

Here's a home designed and built boiler system:

This is a system that grew over time. It started with two electric boilers. Then a gas boiler was added and the electric boilers were kept as back-up. Plate exchangers were installed either to keep systems separate or because of pressure fluctuations. The second electric boiler and a pump are in a shop and another pump is in the pool house. A fan/coil unit with another pump is out of the picture.

There are several levels of priority: 1) DHW, 2) House, 3) Shop, and 4) Pool. Air conditioning is held off if the house is heating. A call for heat will start either the gas or electric boiler, a main circulating pump, a plate exchanger pump and the appropriate zone.

The controller is a Zelio programmable relay. Before the relay, the owner had an extension cord on each pump.

Unfortunately, the boilers are all too small and they still need to use the fireplace to heat the house.