Garn Install 15 mos. and winding down!

[rvtgr8]

In my never ending quest to get my Garn installed, I am now to the point of going through the wall with my intake and exhaust pipes. I have been okayed to convert my garage into a Garn den. This will cause me to build a garage next year that is unattached to the house. The problem that I have run into is one of placement. The Garn's (1500) exhaust must remain 12" above the intake pipe if it is going straight out and blowing downward into a sand filled container that manages cinders. My question is how critical is it that the intake be offset from the exhaust? Would it be a problem to have them both come out of the wall with the intake directly below the exhaust pipe? The problem is that I have a natural stone wainscot on the the outside of my house. I have taken out a floor to ceiling window for the exhaust, but the intake would have to go directly through the stone. I would like to flush mount the intake 12" directly below the exhaust, keeping in mind that the exhaust continues out another 24 to 30 inches. Any thoughts?

Robert

 

[heaterman]

In my never ending quest to get my Garn installed, I am now to the point of going through the wall with my intake and exhaust pipes. I have been okayed to convert my garage into a Garn den. This will cause me to build a garage next year that is unattached to the house. The problem that I have run into is one of placement. The Garn's (1500) exhaust must remain 12" above the intake pipe if it is going straight out and blowing downward into a sand filled container that manages cinders. My question is how critical is it that the intake be offset from the exhaust? Would it be a problem to have them both come out of the wall with the intake directly below the exhaust pipe? The problem is that I have a natural stone wainscot on the the outside of my house. I have taken out a floor to ceiling window for the exhaust, but the intake would have to go directly through the stone. I would like to flush mount the intake 12" directly below the exhaust, keeping in mind that the exhaust continues out another 24 to 30 inches. Any thoughts?

Robert

A determining factor for our installations is what is on the ground in line with the vent. Green grass? bare dirt? pine needles? Flammability is the key here. I have a customer about 3 miles from my house that just vents it straight out the side of the pole barn. Nice white steel that is still white 2 years after installation. I have only had one instance where the exhaust was pushed back against the building on a -10* night and the water vapor iced over the intake screen.

 

[rvtgr8]

Thanks for responding Heaterman,

The wall is natural stone up 36" from the ground up. The ground is covered with grass, but that could easily be replaced with gravel. Flammability is not a real issue, but I was wondering if there was an issue other than that?

Robert

 

[larry4406]

Probably not applicable, but on HVAC equipment (gas furnances) there is typically a 10' separation distance between fresh air intake and exhaust. This is often in the manual as well as Code.

 

[heaterman]

Probably not applicable, but on HVAC equipment (gas furnances) there is typically a 10' separation distance between fresh air intake and exhaust. This is often in the manual as well as Code.

True but not applicable in this case. The separation you are referring to applies when the intake serves the dwelling or another appliance. In this case the Garn is a direct vented appliance and that separation does not apply. In fact, using gas furnaces as an example, the vent and intake must be on the same wall and most manuals specify that they be located no more than 1' from each other. The issue there is that the manufacturers want both intake and exhaust to "see" the same atmospheric pressure for proper operation. This is not a factor with a Garn because of the volume of air it moves and the vent pressure it's able to develop.

 

[heaterman]

Thanks for responding Heaterman,

The wall is natural stone up 36" from the ground up. The ground is covered with grass, but that could easily be replaced with gravel. Flammability is not a real issue, but I was wondering if there was an issue other than that?

Robert

If it were me, I'd vent it straight out and see if it works satisfactorily for you. If you have problems of some type you can devise plan B later but I doubt if you will.

 

[Tattooz]

 

[Tattooz]

 

[Tattooz]

Here are a few photos of mine, it's not right under but it's close. No probs so far!

 

[Jim K in PA]

Tattooz! Yer alive? Welcome back . . .

 

[Tattooz]

Summers are crazy time for me!!
Just getting the garn up and running had to do my first drain and filling her back up!

 

[rvtgr8]

The fact that I have now been down with the flue for 9 days coupled with our first two snows and 16*F temps has me really behind on my schedule. Thanks for the pics Tat. I really don't think it will be a problem either. My next phase is wiring in my controls. Cross your fingers for me.

Robert

 

[rvtgr8]

Over the flu, I got a call to come and get four live bee hives. If you have ever kept bees, you do that kind of thing at night. I had a suit malfunction in the dark and got stung about 15 times. That put me out for even a longer period of time, enough time for yet another storm.

The photos here show my current progress including the venting solution. The bags by the door are my compressed vermiculite which I will install as soon as I leak test the main lines.

Comments about the system? Being stupid enough to get stung 15 times? Use of vermiculite? Getting older and having the flu? Kyle Orton?

 

[heaterman]

Over the flu, I got a call to come and get four live bee hives. If you have ever kept bees, you do that kind of thing at night. I had a suit malfunction in the dark and got stung about 15 times. That put me out for even a longer period of time, enough time for yet another storm.

The photos here show my current progress including the venting solution. The bags by the door are my compressed vermiculite which I will install as soon as I leak test the main lines.

Comments about the system? Being stupid enough to get stung 15 times? Use of vermiculite? Getting older and having the flu? Kyle Orton?

I take it the white stuff is snow and not spilled vermiculite.. Install looks very well done....Had one of my guys get diagnosed with H1N1 today. The doc says that 99.999% of people with it suffer no more than with any other bug going around and the press is blowing it ALL out of proportion....so...big deal on the flu.....as to getting stung 15 times because of a wardrobe malfunction...........hmmmmm no comment on that

 

[sdrobertson]

Looking real good...the install is getting close which is good seeing as you have snow already. Keep it up and your almost to the fun part when you just throw in wood and sit back and enjoy the heat. Glad your feeling better.

 

[Gooserider]

Never done night moves on a hive myself, but my bee supply lady has, and she is one of those crazy people that generally works with just a veil - I've done a hive inspection, me in a "space suit" and her in a t-shirt and short shorts... She does tell about one time her and a friend were doing a night move with a hive lifter, and had the bottom board fall off... She said it was wonderful telepathic coordination - 1,2,3, Put hive down, RUN!

Me, I've always had a fantasy of throwing a hive in the sidecar and moving it to a new location in my bee suit - see if there would be any cops dumb / brave enough to try and pull me over and give me a helmet ticket... :coolsmirk:

Good luck on finishing up the install, looks good so far.

Gooserider

 

[rvtgr8]

Okay, there is no way around it, I am now at the point in time where I must wire the Garn into the existing system. For those of you that that are keeping score, I have a Burnham Series II boiler (low pressure/164K btu Model 206 PI – TEID) hooked into an high mass radiant system. There are five heating zones and a sixth zone runs a sidearm domestic water heating unit. The zones are controlled by Honeywell 40004850-001 valves that get their marching orders from thermostats in each zone of the house or from the sidearm. I have installed a Garn 1500. I have installed a fifty plate heat exchanger between the old Burnham system and the Garn. The Garn will be the primary heat source through the winter, with the Burnham only firing when the Garn drops below a certain set temperature. The Garn will also be heating a well insulated hot tub room with an old cast iron radiator and the 500 gallon tub. The smaller Grunfos 15-58 will be controlled by the hot tub HX thermostat. I have a Tekmar 356 controller and although it might be a future consideration, the outdoor temperature reset is not a priority.

What Do I Want? -

Plenty of hot water for my wife. Lots of it. When she has hot water, I am her hero. The colder the water, the colder the shoulder.

I want the simplest control system I can implement and have the Burnham be there to kick in if for some reason we are called away.

I want to be past the installation stage and on to the tweaking stage.

Can anyone share with me their vision on just how to get to this point?

 

[Jim K in PA]

Robert - read Tom's recent post on his piping setup. Here is the thread: https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/44168/

A couple of points:

1. Your hot tub is on the GARN circuit, which is non-pressurized. Is this what you intended?

2. It looks like you have the HX between the boiler and the GARN set up as a secondary loop, but you have no pump on the boiler side. No pump, no flow.

3. Per Tom's thread above, you have a choice as to setting up the flow through your existing boiler all the time, or to bypass it. As you have drawn it, you are pumping through it all the time. Is this what you want?

Your getting close. Keep plugging.

 

[RobC]

To keep the Burnham off you could use something like the Tekmar 256 with an outdoor reset. They make others with out the outdoor reset. Have not finished my set up but that's what I'm planning on using. Tekmar 256 has 2 sensors. 1 goes to a supply on tank or a pipe so when it see low temps it turns on Burnham. You might place it near your heat exchanger. Outdoor reset monitors the outside temps and adjusts supply water temps.
Rob

 

[rvtgr8]

Jim,

You are right on so many levels. The corrected drawing (which also may be flawed) is included in this post. The boiler side has my Taco 007-5f. The thing that I did not include in my rushed drawing was the fact that there is a HX at the tub. No fluids will co-mingle with my Garn. Unless there is a significant heat loss associated with the constant sharing between the two systems I am okay with it. My logic may be flawed here though. If the propane boiler is always on and the Garn is not, it seems to me it would burn all the time because it would be losing heat back to the Garn through the HX. But my intention is to use the Garn nearly 100% of the time. Am I way off base?

I understand you redid some of your system...was it anything to do with this same situation? Is my drawing any clearer?

 

[rvtgr8]

Rob,

Thanks for your comments. I have a Tekmar 356 that does the things of which you speak. I am not familiar with the 256, but because I am a rookie, that means very little.
I hope that you spend a lot of time on this site talking with all of these good people. Without the group here I would have installed a system, but I am not sure it would have been remotely associated with a working system.

Robert

 

[Donl]

Both HX need to have two pumps. One on each side of HX.

 

[Gooserider]

Jim,

You are right on so many levels. The corrected drawing (which also may be flawed) is included in this post. The boiler side has my Taco 007-5f. The thing that I did not include in my rushed drawing was the fact that there is a HX at the tub. No fluids will co-mingle with my Garn. Unless there is a significant heat loss associated with the constant sharing between the two systems I am okay with it. My logic may be flawed here though. If the propane boiler is always on and the Garn is not, it seems to me it would burn all the time because it would be losing heat back to the Garn through the HX. But my intention is to use the Garn nearly 100% of the time. Am I way off base?

I understand you redid some of your system...was it anything to do with this same situation? Is my drawing any clearer?

The Garn side looks OK, I don't see any real issues with the hot tub being on the Garn side as long as you don't mind the tub getting cold if the Garn does... If the tub was in series with the house HX, I'd be worried about it possibly stealing to much heat from the house, but since it's a seperate loop with it's own pump, no problem as the controls can be set to give the house priority as appropriate.

Where I still see a problem even with the pump relocated, is on the house side of the HX. You don't have anything keeping the Garn heat from going through the boiler, which I assume you don't want, and even more impotantly, you don't have anything that would make the water flow through the house side of the HX - there are two closely spaced tees, on the HX loop, with no pump to make water flow through them.

I see two possible options that might fix this...

1. Put a pipe across the radiant load so that you are making a pure load house radiant loop, and leave the existing pump on the load loop. Tie the Burnham to the load loop with a pair of closely spaced tees like the HX is, and put a small pump with a flow check on each of the resulting heat source loops. If the Garn is hot the HX pump feeds the radiant loop, and the boiler pump is off with no flow through its loop. If the Garn is cold the reverse applies.

2. Put one line of the HX house side on the other side of the Burnham so that the two sources are in parallel, and leave the house pump where it is. Put a ZV or motorized ball valve in each of the boiler and HX lines, (given your planned use, I'd make the boiler valve be NC and the HX valve be NO, just to save using the energy on actuating the valves most of the time). Set up your controls to open the valve on which ever unit is supplying the heat, and close the one on the other and let the house pump push the heat through the load and the source. EDIT - clarification - the house pump must be on the radiant load side of the circuit, not on either of the heat source parts, so in the drawing the house side of the HX would have to connect between the Burnham and the pump, not between the pump and the loads.

Either way, the idea is that you have isolated the source that isn't hot, and have circulation to the one that is...

Gooserider

 

[rvtgr8]

I am becoming seriously confused. My normal state, so not to worry. Here is a drawing from a long while ago. I realize that the Garn side has a few mistakes, but for illustrative purposes, this drawing more accurately shows my existing house system. Are you guys suggesting major modifications to the house side in terms of adding circulators?

 

[kabbott]

In this diagram you have the heat exchanger as part of the main loop(vs. connected with two closely spaced tee's which would require another pump).
This is how I would plumb it with the exception that I would cut the burnham out of the main loop and tie it in with two tee's and a circulator. That way
if you rarely use the burnham you will not be keeping it hot for no reason, which will lower standby losses. This will require 2 pumps running when heating
with the burnham so there is a trade off depending on the percentage of time the burnham will be used.