Hardy H2 — is this 3 separated pumps?

[ranchgirl]

Prefacing this by saying I’ve never messed with a wood boiler before. And I don’t need this set up for my water heater. Just trying to get it going for heat. Manual: http://www.hardyheater.com/Pdf/H2-H4-A.pdf (I am pretty sure anyway; this doesn’t have a product number on it, just a serial number lol).

Supposedly this wood boiler was running just a little over a year ago. The pipes are burst, and when I opened it to try soldering it, I was just straight up confused by what is going on inside. I watched a lot of videos, read the manual. I think I’ve mostly made sense of it, but….

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Am I crazy, or are these three different pumps? I am assuming the two on the left got bypassed. The cords to them isn’t wired to anything. Only the one on the right is.

Close ups of each one:

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My second question is…. I am wondering if I can just cut out 50% of this. What confuses me is that the bottom valve is the return from the radiator — the cooler side of the return? (Getting this from:

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) Mine is connected to the pump, too.

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Yellow leads from the valve at the bottom, to the return from the radiator. Pink is how it connects to the pump. My understanding is that the yellow should go into the bottom valve — to return into the wood boiler. Then it gets heated, and sucked back out by that pump to return to the radiator with hot water.

So can I just cut out/remove everything that’s green/yellow in this pic, and connect the radiator return directly to the bottom valve?

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Here is a pic with no markings:

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I also attached all these files to the post but I thought Imgur made the reference easier.

 

[SWVA Farmhouse]

I too have a Hardy boiler, but mine is probably a later model and is set up a little different. Perhaps I can help some. On the right, that is your circulation pump (Taco brand). In the center, it appears to be an electric water solenoid, this is most likely for auto filling water into the tank. On the left is what appears to be a heat exchanger. None of those items should be removed in my opinion. If they do not work, there are replacement parts available. The place I order my parts is outside heating inc., just Google that name.

 

[ranchgirl]

I too have a Hardy boiler, but mine is probably a later model and is set up a little different. Perhaps I can help some. On the right, that is your circulation pump (Taco brand). In the center, it appears to be an electric water solenoid, this is most likely for auto filling water into the tank. On the left is what appears to be a heat exchanger. None of those items should be removed in my opinion. If they do not work, there are replacement parts available. The place I order my parts is outside heating inc., just Google that name.

Thank you for the reply! 🙏 and the sanity check… I was just about ready to start ripping stuff out lol

You are correct. I was able to confirm through google that’s what those parts are — thanks! I just didn’t even know where to start looking without knowing the proper names for them.

I ordered a few replacement parts to try to get the electricity going. The GFCI was bad so I replaced it the other night, and now it trips every time I plug in the line going to the Honeywell aquastat. Not sure if it’s because the aquastat is bad or due to something with the wiring. My understanding is that the aquastat triggers the blower, so I can’t confirm if that’s working until I get the other pieces going. So while I wait for those parts, I’m going to solder the pipes and try to get it hooked back up to the main water supply. I believe the previous owner of this house used to fill it manually. Beginning to think i probably need to replace the heat exhanger and the water solenoid because they look pretty ate up lol

 

[SWVA Farmhouse]

On my unit, there are two plugs, one for the pump and one for everything else. It could be any number of things tripping the GFCI receptacle. Since the blower, relays, solenoid, thermostat all tie into the one plug, it could be any one of those. Every one I know who has this unit and a tech who worked on mine recommended not using a GFCI receptacle, just a regular one which is what I did. Those things always cause a lot of headaches and are not reliable. There is still a users manual available on line, I will put the link here, but don’t know whether it will link directly to the manual:

http://www.hardyheater.com/Pdf/H2%20-%20H5%20Manual.pdf

A few other tips, never open the top door first, always open the bottom door for about 5-10 seconds before opening the top door to load wood.

Check the seals around both doors after you burn it a time or two. If they don’t seal good, it will burn a lot more wood.

Double check that the doors close and are latched after opening. The fire will start burning like crazy if it isn’t shut tight.