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Re: Coal/Oil Boiler-Question About Domestic Hot Water

Posted: Wed. Apr. 03, 2013 8:33 am
by waldo lemieux
You might consider getting a programmable thermostat. Set it so that your house is up to temp just before shower time . Then after it gets back up to temp and shuts off its shower time. I don't know if they make such a thing as a flow switch (that opens on flow), but if so you could interrupt the ground wire for the circ. to the switch and when the water is flowing thru the coil the circulator couldnt come on. Seems like it should work....

waldo

Re: Coal/Oil Boiler-Question About Domestic Hot Water

Posted: Wed. Apr. 03, 2013 12:51 pm
by oilman
Freddy wrote: In my opinion it's a necessity. Allowing the boiler to drop below 140* is not a good thing. The last thing a boiler wants to do is expand, contract, expand contact. It won't bother a steel boiler too much, but it can be bad for a cast iron boiler. Also, dropping below 140 can allow condensation to occur in the exhaust & that's a bad thing too. That might be more of an oil thing than a coal thing, but physics is physics.
My thoughts exactly. Cold return water killing the temps is not good at all. You could have vastly better heat with some changes.Probably save quite a bit of fuel also.

Re: Coal/Oil Boiler-Question About Domestic Hot Water

Posted: Wed. Apr. 03, 2013 2:54 pm
by AA130FIREMAN
What the others said seems to make sence, but I would still look at what the temperature of the boiler drops too while your wife is showering and thethermostat is calling for heat. Looks like their is a tempering valve on the domestic coil, could it be causing the trouble (looks like the domestic temp. is good at 120, or on the black mark on the gauge when the picture was taken)

Re: Coal/Oil Boiler-Question About Domestic Hot Water

Posted: Fri. Apr. 05, 2013 10:48 am
by bbecker
Thank you everyone for your help and lots of good advice! We will be getting the installer out here to check things over within the next couple of weeks. I will report back and let you all know what we ended up doing to fix this problem!

Re: Coal/Oil Boiler-Question About Domestic Hot Water

Posted: Sun. Apr. 07, 2013 7:57 am
by Don
Just my two cents, if the boiler is dropping below 140 on a regular basis won't the boiler condense and cause premature failure?
If it were mine I would wire it to stop Cir when temp drops to 140. Very easy fix.