Central boiler piping

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1948b1pw

New Member
Nov 11, 2007
1
CT
I recently had my Central boiler hooked up by the plumber that did my heating system when the house was built. My problem is that when he piped it, he kept the piping on the boiler side of the heat exchanger plate running it the same direction, which means I am running water into the bottom of the boiler and pulling it off the top with the circulator pump. I called him about this and he said the boiler is small enough that there is only a small amount of efficiency lost running it in this direction. My question is, I know the piping is not per the Cental Boiler drawings but do I need him to change it? The drawings show the circulator pump taking water from the bottom and dumping it into the top. He also installed the filter for the boiler after the plate exchanger. Should this also be changed so that it is before the plate exchanger? I have a McClain 126,000 btu boiler with a hot water tank and a hydro air home system.
 
My wood boiler water goes into the top of my gas boiler, mainly so that the hottest water is always what's being pumped up into the house. My gas boiler is idle when the wood side is going. But I don't think it would make much, if any, difference to pipe the feed from the wood boiler into the return. The only conceivable effect, the way I see it, is that you might have a slower reaction time to a call for heat under certain conditions, i.e., when there's a heavy demand on the system and the water at the bottom of the boiler is a lot cooler than the water at the top. It would take longer to get the wood heat to the top.
 
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