520 df gives very little hot water with municipal water

 
ODDSNENDS4U
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Post by ODDSNENDS4U » Mon. Dec. 11, 2017 5:42 pm

I have a df520 and had sufficient hot water up till about 2 weeks ago. I went from Well water to municipal water. At that time the water is not getting hot enough anymore for good showers. Seems the water is colder coming in now then it was from the well. Also had storage tank on well and now comes from main line right into furnace. Any help out there?


 
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Rob R.
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Post by Rob R. » Mon. Dec. 11, 2017 6:50 pm

Perhaps you now have more water pressure, and as a result higher demand for hot water.

 
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Post by franpipeman » Mon. Dec. 11, 2017 7:23 pm

what about the basic .... coil need cleaning maybe pressure or change over caused clogged of debris

 
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Post by Rob R. » Mon. Dec. 11, 2017 7:30 pm

Good point, the plumbing work could have loosened up some crud. Clean the mixing valve.

 
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Post by CapeCoaler » Mon. Dec. 11, 2017 8:22 pm

Or crud came in on the new muni pipe install...
Does not take much debris to cut down the flow

 
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Post by Pacowy » Mon. Dec. 11, 2017 8:55 pm

Also would be good to know low limit setting on aquastat. I needed 160+ to make DHW from municipal water.

Mike

 
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Post by McGiever » Mon. Dec. 11, 2017 9:35 pm

Plain and simple, all things being equal, colder incoming water will NOT be the same temp out-going.

Make the boiler hotter or slow down the flow to allow the additional BTUs needed the time to bring/make up the addition degrees.
Now obliviously slowing down the flow rate is not a great option but to illustrate the needed results I threw that in. ;)

My water is damn near ice water when outdoors temps dip but having an indirect HWH allows for the circulator speed to be increased to compensate for this and add quickly the BTUs necessary to the holding tank...a tankless coil has NO such option w/o any circulator to push/pull additional BTUs and stack them up in a holding tank.

Find a way to circulate and to store and you will be good to go. :)


 
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Post by Pacowy » Mon. Dec. 11, 2017 11:40 pm

In my experience a coil will work fine without any kind of tank as long as you maintain an adequate boiler temp. Let's see what's happening now before advising the OP to spend a bunch of money on a tank.

Mike

 
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Post by lsayre » Tue. Dec. 12, 2017 4:21 am

Pacowy wrote:
Mon. Dec. 11, 2017 11:40 pm
In my experience a coil will work fine without any kind of tank as long as you maintain an adequate boiler temp. Let's see what's happening now before advising the OP to spend a bunch of money on a tank.

Mike
I agree! I also improved the comfort factor of my DHW coil greatly by giving it "priority". To do this I added an aquastat to the boiler which shuts off my one and only circulator if the boilers internal temperature falls to 155 degrees (with a 5 degree differential). The effect of this is that even if the T-Stats are calling for heat and their respective zone valves are open the homes multiple heating zones are all (temporarily) starved of heat and thereby the DHW coil is allowed to have all of it, but as soon as the boiler recovers to 160 degrees the circulator comes back on and the homes zones are permitted to be heated again.

Before this modification, if we were taking a shower and multiple zones suddenly called for heat on a really cold day, the shower suddenly went tepid. After this modification, we have not experienced a single tepid shower. I do have a switch that bypasses the aquastat and permits the circulator to run unhindered by this modification, but to date I've never had to use this switch.

I seem to recall that it was both you and Rob who independently suggested this modification to me, perhaps 4 - 5 years ago.

 
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Post by coalkirk » Tue. Dec. 12, 2017 7:28 am

Another solution would be to install an indirect water heater.

 
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Post by Pacowy » Tue. Dec. 12, 2017 8:07 am

ck, that's a lot of $ to throw at a problem without knowing it's needed.

Glad that suggestion was helpful to you, Larry. Didn't you once perform a test that involved running DHW out of your boiler and using the flow rate and change in temp to infer the btu transfer? I don't even remember the overall purpose of the test, but IIRC it showed any doubters that a small, inexpensive coil can produce some serious DHW.

Mike

 
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Post by windyhill4.2 » Tue. Dec. 12, 2017 8:27 am

The system was working fine on well water..
The switch to municipal water has changed things...

:?: What happened ?? What changed ??
????
Lets see..... unhooked the well water... hooked to NEW water pipes from NEW municipal install...

Thinking,thinking.........IDEA !!

DIRT !!!!

Do i take some things apart & clean ??

Maybe b4 doing something so simple, i should spend lots of $$$$ on additions to the system to see if that would get away from a simple correction.

Choices,choices.... so hard to decide.

 
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Post by lsayre » Tue. Dec. 12, 2017 9:04 am

Pacowy wrote:
Tue. Dec. 12, 2017 8:07 am
ck, that's a lot of $ to throw at a problem without knowing it's needed.

Glad that suggestion was helpful to you, Larry. Didn't you once perform a test that involved running DHW out of your boiler and using the flow rate and change in temp to infer the btu transfer? I don't even remember the overall purpose of the test, but IIRC it showed any doubters that a small, inexpensive coil can produce some serious DHW.

Mike
I rely upon running DHW when I'm starting and establishing a new fire in the S130 Coal Gun. My boiler reaches fan cut-off at 180 degrees, so when first firing up and at about 170 degrees I begin to run hot water adjusted to ~2 gpm into a nearby sink. I have well water, and if I assume the well water coming in at 50 degrees and I measure it going out at 130 degrees (which is where I have mine set at), the differential (rise) is 80 degrees.

BTUH = 2 gpm * 60 min/hr x 8.34 lbs/gal x 80 degrees = 80,064

When the boiler has successfully climbed the 80K BTUH wall which I have erected for it, and it eventually hits 180 degrees and shuts off, I then stop running the water into the sink. This practice establishes a nice bed of burning coals in the Coal Gun S130.

This shows that heating only 2 GPM of water via the coil taxes a 130K BTUH input boiler nigh on to the max. There is simply no way possible for an S130 or an AA-130 to sustain more than about a maximum of 2.5 GPM of DHW flow, and that would be questionable in my opinion. An AHS S260 or an AA-260 when running maxed out can however (on paper at least) provide a home with a full 5 GPM of 130 degree DHW via its internal coil alone.

**** But for the purpose of answering your inquiry, it also shows that heating a flow of merely 2 GPM of water to 130 degrees requires 80,000 BTUH of boiler output, or at least 100,000 BTUH of boiler input. That is about twice the heat that my house requires for home heating on the coldest day of the year. DHW heating places far more demand upon a boiler than does home heating. ****

 
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Post by McGiever » Tue. Dec. 12, 2017 9:51 am

Please, everybody, do not ignore the fact that the OP has had a change/difference in incoming water temp.
Not saying there can't be other factors at play here, but please do not ignore the Fact of approx.15*F lower in water.
Thanks
Last edited by McGiever on Tue. Dec. 12, 2017 9:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

 
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Post by gaw » Tue. Dec. 12, 2017 9:56 am

McGiever wrote:
Tue. Dec. 12, 2017 9:51 am
Please, everybody, do not ignore the fact that the OP has had a change/difference in incoming water temp.
Not saying there can't be other factors at play here, but please do not ignore this Fact.
Thanks
But one thing is for certain, it is no colder than 32 degrees :D


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