tuolumne - 20 January 2008 09:55 PM
ABG...I plan to pipe mine just like the diagram that master of sparks posted. The danfoss is 1-1/2” so I should be able to get plenty of flow through it. It seems to be a pretty foolproof system.
Someone mentioned corrosion inhibitor in the closed system. Any names I should look for? I’ll have something close to 1200 gallons altogether.
For my first 20 years in business i just used the water available on the job. These were typical cast iron boiler copper fin tube installations. This was a common practice and those systems performed just fine for many many years.
Now a days boilers we use are stainless or aluminum mod cons. I feel treatment and a good cleaning is critical to the life of these boilers. The stainless heat exchangers are scary thin, and aluminum is very sensitive to ph. The cost of these boilers make you want to get it right the first time.
As far as a steel or cast wood boiler.... I think I would just run a TSP solution through it to clean out any oils, solder flux, dirt, grease, etc. Then just fill it with good water. Flush and fill. TSP will leave the system a bit on the alkiline side which is ok. For years Weil and Burnham had TSP cleaning instructions in their manuals. since TSP is now on the EPA hit list (phosphates) I don’t see that anymore. although most on the shelf TSP is phosphate free these days. Go figure?
Check the hardness of you water. 10 grains or below should not be a problem. If you have extremely hard water consider buying some DI (deionized) or DM (demineralized) water from a close by water treatment company. I pay 10 cents a gallon for DI water and haul it to job sites in plastic drums. Only if the jobsite water is real hard or high TDS, which is common in some brand new wells around here.
As far as the Laddomat pump sizing.. It depends what you have downstream of the device. A radiant floor job with high pressure drop may not be a good match. Cast iron or copper baseboard usually flows easily, same with old cast iron radiators. The pressure drop through the EKO and other gasification boilers has to be near zip. It a pretty wide open vessel, with very large connection taps.
Ideally you would calculate all the piping, gpm requirements, and pressure drop. Someone, like the manufacturer, should have a pump curve for the laddomat pump along with the pressure drop of that assembly. With that data you would know the available head and flow rate.
Adding an addition circ may not be a good idea. With circs in in series you add head and may get into a velocity, noise and erosion issue. Circs in parallel will near double the gpm, but not change the head. That may or may not be the solution.
The stars may lie but the numbers never do. Do some calcs before spending time and money.
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