Five year old Weil-Mclain Indirect Water Heater is leaking!
semi
14 years ago
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baymee
14 years agoRelated Discussions
Confused about water heaters...
Comments (13)"Do some direct water heaters sill require electricity and some don't?" You can find significant reading on the department of energy and Energy Star web sites about different types of water heaters. You might find some pics to help you understand. IIRC, it probably does not treat auxiliary water heating on boilers as completely as for stand-alone water heaters. A conventional tank water heater has a flue right up the middle of the tank where combustion gasses go to heat the water. When the water is not heating, indoor air is drawn up through tube in the middle of the tank constantly. This is an air leak in your house and cools the water off more quickly. A more efficient water heater has a blower, mechanical damper, and the associated safety equipment to close this off in addition to a combustion system to wring more heat out of the combustion, like the Navien. Your choice 'boils" down to higher efficiency and higher initial cost for a modern water heater vs. lower initial cost and lower efficiency for the old-fashion tank heater. Cost savings in equipment might not be that great, however, because you need a flue through the roof for the stone-hatchet tank heater. If I were you, I'd just use the Navien with the appropriate equipment for making DHW. If you are worried about HW in a power failure, make provisions to hook a nat gas genset to your boiler. It won't take much of a genset, portable or automatic to run that. You don't need an automatic genset because you don't need hot water when you are not home, but you might decide to install automatic backup for other reasons....See Moreweil-mclain
Comments (8)I'm from Upstate New York. Most techs service natural gas, oil & LP. Natural gas in the city areas is serviced by a mixture of plumbers, heating techs, and a variety of general contractors. We have a lot of oil & propane fuel/sales/service/installation outfits that service the rural areas... Everything from mobile home furnaces to fireplaces, gas stoves, pellet stoves, System 2000, Buderus & Veissmann mod/con wall hung boilers. Some outfits these days seem to be more interested in selling fuel, service contracts and installing new equipment than doing service. Some people don't service what they sell. Licensing and enforcement of codes is almost nonexistent in many areas of the state. Anyone with a truck and enough knowledge to be dangerous to themselves and their customers is doing general contracting, plumbing, heating and electrical work....See MoreSpill Switch getting stuck on Weil-McLain EG-45 Gas Boiler
Comments (22)Everyone, Once again thank you for all your very helpful comments that you gave me this past May. As "heating" season is going to start soon here in the Northeast, I will be again relying on my gas boiler again. Since the last posting here, I had a professional come out here to clean & inspect the boiler, double check the chimney (he stuck a mirror into it and we both saw daylight) and he proclaimed the unit in perfect working condition. The Pro did advise me on two things that I wish to run by you all for further opinion, lf you don't mind. 1) The Pro advised (he has over 30 years of experience) that I should get a "better quality" spill switch than the one that I currently am using. The one I have (and already changed 2 times) is the one that is made specifically for this unit (rated at 210F): http://www.supplyhouse.com/Weil-McLain-510-300-013-Spill-Switch-w-Reset-210-F He said I should get a better quality one made by Field Controls, something like: http://www.supplyhouse.com/Field-Controls-GSK-4-200-Gas-Spillage-Sensing-Switch-w-Manual-Reset or even http://www.supplyhouse.com/Field-Controls-FTS-6-180-Safety-Switch-w-Manual-Reset-120-240V Now, my question is this: Since my Weil-McLain EG-45 SPDN unit is rated at 210F, and I will put a spill switch that is 200F or even 180F rated, is that okay? The Pro did confirm that my existing spill-switch location is in the right spot and that I do not need two of them for my type of a unit. 2) As far as the Vent-Damper (to remind, I installed a brand new one last winter, made by Field Controls). The Pro said that he would just leave it in MANUAL mode. When I asked him about the danger of having "bad gasses" leakage into the house, he stated that the boiler will shut itself off as there are other protection sensors there and that this AUTO function is now included into the Vent-Dampers more for better efficiency of the unit than for safety. Is he right? I should also add: a) I do have a 4" clean-air going into the boiler room directly from the street (boiler room being a closed-off section with 2 doors, with two return 20 inches x 8 inches ventilation grille's that have the air escape into the rest of the basement). The actual room measures 6 feet long x 7 feet wide x 8 feet high and only contains the gas hot water heater and the gas boiler. b) On the advice of the Pro, I tried turning on the heat (via my Thermostat) a number of times during the summer's hot & humid days (it was like 80F in the room, so I had to set the Thermostat manually to 82F). The unit started-up every time without problems and I let it work for 5 mins or so before turning it off. The Pro said that during the very humid days that the heavy air that gets trapped in the chimney could force the Vent-Damp to trigger the spill switch. It never did. I await your comments. Thank you again in advance for your time and knowledge....See MoreSudden water leakage via the Steam (Vapor) Valve - Need advice
Comments (5)I guess I would not feel right if I did not add this important update, as someone else may need help down the line and who knows, maybe it will be useful for them. After thinking (and writing here) that all is OKAY after installing the Gorton size 6 vapor valve, it all worked for about 12 hours, and then the water trickling out of the pigtail issue reappeared, as it did with size D, size C and onwards. I just did not want to even try size 5 as I pretty much had enough. So out of frustration and desperation, I decided to put back on the same Taco 417-3 Vent: https://www.supplyhouse.com/Taco-417-3-Coin-Vent-11389000-p that I had on my baseboard before switching it out and installing a cheap-made size C purchased at a local Home Depot around 18 months ago. Again the reason why I did that 18 months ago is that suddenly there was no heat up into that baseboard and I did not understand about the flexibility (adjustability) of Taco fully as I do now. So, for the last 4 days (notice my silence here until now), I have had no issues. No leaks, the heat works just fine and there is no hissing or banging. It took a bit of an effort to find the right “opening level” on the Taco – the thing is so sensitive that an extra 3 millimeters turn on the adjuster could allow water to leak or 3 mm not enough, the valve would be too closed to let the steam in. But in the end, I think I finally have a eureka success moment. The bottom line, I have learned so much over the last year about this stuff (much thanks to people like you in this forum) and I just wish I would have given the Taco another chance sooner. But then again I have also learned that my PSI on the cut-in can be set to much lower than I had before (I went from 3 PSI -> 5 PSI down to 0.5 PSI -> 2.25 PSI) and still have everything work perfectly. Also, I increased the pitch on the baseboard by another .25 inch, and that never hurts for the return to work properly. I still can’t imagine why none of the 3 Gorton’s worked. You would think that size 6 would do it, but it leaked the MOST out of the three! That company is considered the golden standard of quality but I guess this was not a match to be had. Once again, thank you all for all the help....See Moresemi
14 years agoRaymond Pineiro
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoUser
5 years agomillworkman
5 years ago
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