Wood furnace issues I need some advice

[peteandhisn3phew]

I have just purchased a house that has a oil furnace as well as an add on wood boiler. Everything was working fine until I had a freeze break out in my shop and then all hell broke loose. I had the pipe repaired. The plumber I used didn't bleed the circuit properly and I believe the wood furnace portion of the circuit was air bound. All the solder was burned out of the joints. I had that repaired. Now when I use the wood boiler I have this terrible bang noise and what I think is kettling. Hoping that it was air I bled it again to no avail. When I turn the circulator off for the wood stove the kettling or whatever the noise is ceases almost immediately. The plumber I am using says it may be a bad circulator or a bad flow check. I'm sure you will need more information or pictures and I can get those rather quickly. I just want to put this to rest as heating with oil was not in my plans. Any help would be wonderful. Thanks I'm advanced.


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[hondaracer2oo4]

How does the wood tie into the oil boiler? I would start by turning off the oil boiler and just turning on the pump that pushes water through the wood stove. Then I would check for the pipe leaving the wood stove to be getting hot. If it is not getting hot you aren't moving water. Pull the pump and swap it with one of the others to trouble shoot. I would say you are air bound somewhere since the problem started when you opened up the system. Try opening and closing the quarter turn valves quickly and also try slowly on the wood stove side of the system to try to get the pump to kick that air out of the line.

 

[peteandhisn3phew]

The second plumber I know and trust and I was bled out. When I open it to bleed it out I get a large amount of steam. I'm going to make a video right now that I will upload of the entire system.


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[peteandhisn3phew]

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[hondaracer2oo4]

Where are you opening it to bleed it and getting steam? Sounds like very little flow through that line causing the little water that does reach the wood stove is flash steaming which is causing your noise.

 

[peteandhisn3phew]

That makes sense. Check the video I showed the valve. Do you think it's a weak circulator?


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[hondaracer2oo4]

Valve closed on the intake or discharge side of the pump right now? I can't tell which way the pump is pushing from that side of the pump. Fix the solder joint break right now if the system has no water in the line because your going to have to drain it again to fix that joint. I would swap that pump with one of your other pumps from the oil boiler. Looks like they have isolation valves on both sides of the pump to make pump swap easy. That will tell you quickly if it's the pump or flow check.

 

[maple1]

Seems to me that piping on the back of the wood unit would be very hard to get air out of, there's a high spot with no air vent. Usually to purge air, you'd hook a feed hose to that bib down low, then hook another hose for water and trapped air to get out, to another bib that was all the way around what you're trying to get air out of from the first bib. (That sounded confusing). But not having a vent at high spots can make even doing that hard sometimes. Sounds like there'sstill air in there somewhere.

What's the system pressure? Wonder if a valve that was turned off to do some work didn't get turned back on? Why is that valve by the circ turned off?

 

[mustash29]

That sound is bad, don't let it make that sound. Water expands 1600 times when it flashes to steam. That crackling sound is water hammer, it will blow sh!t up.

You need to get that system flushed, filled & vented properly, along with making sure all the circulators are working properly.

 

[hondaracer2oo4]

The noise is thoroughly impressive.

 

[peteandhisn3phew]

Thanks for the help. I had someone come out and fix another leak. It looks as if an aqua stat was set too high and not allowing he excess heat to dump into the garage. All is well now. It's great not to be burning tons of oil. Thanks for all of your insight. [emoji1533]


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