Switzer 1750

[Sukhoi29SU]

Gary and his daughter drove out from New York to install his 1750 gal boiler at my home in northern Illinois. I put a deposit on this boiler back in 2019 before I started a major home renovation project that I ended up GC’ing and doing a significant amount of work on myself. The project took a lot longer than I envisioned, so I wasn’t ready for the boiler until recently. After many years of phone conversations and emails, I finally felt that I had everything prepped as best that I could, and Gary made the long drive out to northern Illinois, where we completed the install in two days.

1750 gallon boiler will heat approx 7400sf. Approx 4000sf of living space, 1700sf of upper garage, and 1700sf of workshop underneath garage where boiler sits. Boiler sits within 10” concrete/ICF walls with 3” of foam on each side.

Propane backup (been primary for a couple years) Bosch Greenstar boiler on opposite corner of the room. I have 1 1/4” pex running supply/return lines through 4” PVC along ceiling over to the wall of Bosch boiler, DHW tank, and pumps. I also ran 3/4” lines through the PVC pipe and through Gary’s wood boiler for DHW pre-heat.

For radiant heat use, designed to use Gary’s wood boiler water until 120 degrees when it kicks over to propane.

I have obviously yet to heat the floors with it, but Gary fired it up for the first time and brought cold well water up to temp nicely.

My plan is to build a 2x6 wall around the boiler, insulate with batt insulation and 2”foam board before dry walling the outside. I’ll most likely rock wool the interior. I’ll leave 6-9 feet at the front of the boiler for wood storage and a small access door for getting the tool through to clean the tubes. I’ll put an 8” hole in the concrete wall behind boiler for air. This room will cut down on blower noise, and also keep the heat manageable in the workshop if I decide to fire up in summer for domestic hot water.

I made the decision for a Switzer boiler after considerable research here on this site. I certainly appreciate the wealth of knowledge here.

Gary is brilliant, and you won’t find a nicer guy. I’m confident that this boiler will serve me well and I can cut way down on the propane usage this upcoming winter. I highly recommend reaching out to him if you’re considering an indoor boiler. Pictures of the install attached.

 

[Brownstone mony pit]

Gary is one of the coolest guys I've ever met. Brilliant engineer. I need to give him a call here shortly about my 2600g.

What do you use to manage your propane boiler so it only kicks on at 120? I have my old oil boiler for my backup but it wants to keep firing up to 180 when turned on (I just wired up a big red kill switch for when I'm out of town)

 

[salecker]

Gary is one of the coolest guys I've ever met. Brilliant engineer. I need to give him a call here shortly about my 2600g.

What do you use to manage your propane boiler so it only kicks on at 120? I have my old oil boiler for my backup but it wants to keep firing up to 180 when turned on (I just wired up a big red kill switch for when I'm out of town)

On my system,with storage i have a two position aquastat on the supply line from my storage. When the storage temp gets below 100 it switches the power from my storage pump to my backup oil boiler which then fires and maintains the temp

 

[gthomas785]

On my system,with storage i have a two position aquastat on the supply line from my storage. When the storage temp gets below 100 it switches the power from my storage pump to my backup oil boiler which then fires and maintains the temp

I did a setup like this for my grandpa's OWB and it works pretty well. You need an aqua stat on the wood boiler or wherever your largest thermal mass is to lock out the backup boiler whenever it's up to temp. Then when the backup is on you need to lock out the boiler circulator or it will be trying to heat the wood boiler/storage with propane. You can use the 2 position aquastat or use a NC relay off the propane boiler circuit.

 

[Sukhoi29SU]

Reference pic ; The pump circled in red brings over hot water from wood boiler. The pump circled in green is for the propane boiler. Whenever there is a call for heat for the radiant floors , the propane boiler receives a signal and both pumps turn on. The wood boiler supplies hot water which runs through the hydraulic separator and through the primary side (through the propane boiler). The propane boiler thermostat recognizes that it has hot enough water (exceeding that set by the propane boiler dial) -and that it doesn’t need to be running and shuts down (or doesn’t fire up at all) Both pumps continue to run. Gary has an aquastat set to 120 on his boiler that turns off the wood boiler pump when water reduces to less than 120 temp.
Unfortunately the heat exchanger on my propane boiler needs replaced. It’s leaking and the system isn’t holding pressure as a result. So I’ve closed some valves off and shut the propane boiler down and as of now I’m only using Gary’s boiler for domestic hot water. So, I haven’t actually been able to see this process happen but only for a few times when it was about 60 degrees outside and we were calling for heat on the thermostats to test it out. But it did work as advertised. The temp on the propane boiler went up to about 180 as it brought over hot water from Gary’s boiler and it immediately shut down as the pumps continued to run. I have two thermostatic mixing valves over on Gary’s boiler - one for radiant heat and the other for DHW..
The max temp I need in one of the zones is a bit less than 120 degrees, so theoretically I could turn that thermostatic mixing valve down to maybe 140 or so for the radiant heat- so that it could mix with the return water and still get 120 to the house.

If Bosch doesn’t get back to me soon about the heat exchanger, I supposed I could leave the valves turned off to the propane boiler and simply wire the wood boiler pump to run constantly. I believe this would allow me to run hot water through the floors now.

One other thing I’ve thought of is installing a heat exchanger between Gary’s boiler and the rest of the primary side - it will take a lot of Fernox F1 or Sentinel 100 to treat 1800 gallons of water that run through the floors. If I had a heat exchanger at the wood boiler, I could treat that with wood boiler treatment and only treat the additional 20 gallons ??? Of water or so that actually runs through the primary and floors with fernox or sentinel. Any thoughts on this? I’m not sure what it’d take to get an efficient heat exchanger installed at this point. Another tank between ?