We finished this WHS-2000 up the day before Christmas and I just have to show it off. It was a pleasure to work with this owner because he's the type of guy that takes a "no holds barred" approach when it comes to doing things right. I have to give him all the credit for the unique insulation on the Garn. He has a couple large boilers in his business and I thinkn he came up with the inspiration for covering his Garn in commercial grade mineral wool blanket from those. Frankly, I've been around and worked on 25MMbtu Cleaver Brooks units that were not done as well. He and a couple of the mechanics that work for him welded a lip on the lower edge that enabled the insulation to be tucked in and also welded an additional two inches to the manhole to raise the lid above the insulation. As you can see from the pictures they did a fantastic job. I really like how they formed a lip around the draft inducer housing to finish that area out. That took some nifty metal work around those curved edges. I'm familiar with how well this insulation performs and I'm going to investigate the possibility of supplying it in a prefab kit or package. The pictures don't do it justice.
The unit supplies heat for his house through a 300' run of 1.5" pex and through 120' of 1.25" for the "Last Chance Garage" which is the owners car building shop. We did the design work and furnished the tube, lined up the spray foam insulation for the trenches, plus did the requisite heat loss calcs, near boiler piping and tied it in to his existing house boiler. When the insulating contractor was doing the trench I asked them to "give it a little extra" and it appears they did. I could not measure any temp drop from the "Garn Barn" to the house, 300' away. Surface temp of the pipe was 150* at both spots when I checked it yesterday. Usually I can find at least a degree difference but after checking 3 separate times and coming up with the identical reading, I have to say that the insulation guys did indeed "give it a little extra". The same held true for the shop. They were both reading 150* at the Garn and 150* at their respective destinations.
The house has a perfect heating system to tie into in that it is all low temp radiant floor and complete Tekmar control system already in place. We did find that the original installer had the heating curve on the variable speed injection mixing set far to high for a radiant floor application. It was seldom a problem as far as over heating the floors in the house because the LP boiler didn't have the horsepower to overheat the system unless only 1 or 2 zones were calling. Most of the time the gas boiler would fire and the temp would barely creep up above 130* which is in the danger zone for a standard cast iron boiler. We noticed that the zone piping got very hot right away when we dumped the Garn into the system return and that tipped us off to the heating curve being set at 1.2. With the Garn supplying hot water instead of the LP gas boiler the house would have been 90* by morning. We dialed the Tekmar back to a .6 which should still be plenty of available btu's for the house. The "Last Chance Garage" is heated with a couple Modine fan coils. Both buildings are tied into side B of the LX110-70 heat exchanger allowing all the outdoor piping to be antifreeze protected.
Going to sign off and hit the hay but feel free to ask questions on anything.
The unit supplies heat for his house through a 300' run of 1.5" pex and through 120' of 1.25" for the "Last Chance Garage" which is the owners car building shop. We did the design work and furnished the tube, lined up the spray foam insulation for the trenches, plus did the requisite heat loss calcs, near boiler piping and tied it in to his existing house boiler. When the insulating contractor was doing the trench I asked them to "give it a little extra" and it appears they did. I could not measure any temp drop from the "Garn Barn" to the house, 300' away. Surface temp of the pipe was 150* at both spots when I checked it yesterday. Usually I can find at least a degree difference but after checking 3 separate times and coming up with the identical reading, I have to say that the insulation guys did indeed "give it a little extra". The same held true for the shop. They were both reading 150* at the Garn and 150* at their respective destinations.
The house has a perfect heating system to tie into in that it is all low temp radiant floor and complete Tekmar control system already in place. We did find that the original installer had the heating curve on the variable speed injection mixing set far to high for a radiant floor application. It was seldom a problem as far as over heating the floors in the house because the LP boiler didn't have the horsepower to overheat the system unless only 1 or 2 zones were calling. Most of the time the gas boiler would fire and the temp would barely creep up above 130* which is in the danger zone for a standard cast iron boiler. We noticed that the zone piping got very hot right away when we dumped the Garn into the system return and that tipped us off to the heating curve being set at 1.2. With the Garn supplying hot water instead of the LP gas boiler the house would have been 90* by morning. We dialed the Tekmar back to a .6 which should still be plenty of available btu's for the house. The "Last Chance Garage" is heated with a couple Modine fan coils. Both buildings are tied into side B of the LX110-70 heat exchanger allowing all the outdoor piping to be antifreeze protected.
Going to sign off and hit the hay but feel free to ask questions on anything.
