Hi Everyone,
I usually post on Knots but I need the help of some of you guys. I currently have a hot water heating system powered by an gas boiler. The pipe system is galvanized pipe. I want to change it over to an electric boiler. The chimney needs to be redone and the current boiler is pretty old (20 years). I also like the idea of the compactness of an electric boiler and here in Quebec electricity is as cheap or cheaper than gas.
From what I understand electric boilers are set up to accept copper pipe. This is a duplex with all the pipes running up from the garage through a cemant slab and of course through the walls. I don’t want to get into tearing all that apart so I’ll be connecting from galvanized to copper. I’ve been told I’ll need to use dialectic (spelling?) joints to do this. There are 4 main pipes running to different sections of the building, so I thought I’d use a manifold to connect all of these to the boiler.
What am I missing? Is there anything, from what I’ve told you that would cause me problems? Also is there a formula that tells me how big a boiler I need?
This is my first foray into heating. I’ll have a friend who has quite a bit of knowledge helping and guiding me through it, but I would like to hear from the guys who make a living in the heating business. Also are there any web sites that I might be able to make use of in this project.
Thanks for any help or advise,
Brent
Edited 1/3/2006 7:01 pm ET by BrentS
Replies
I think that your exisiting heating piping is black steel, not galvanized. Black steel was and continues be a very popular and suitable material for heating systems. However, it may be galvanized pipe.
A boiler is not really designed "to accept" any particular material for piping, however when you change materials from copper/brass/bronze to steel as necessary, dielectric coupling(s) are good practice. Many boilers have steel connections and you could connect steel directly to it or you can use copper if you chose. Check with the manufacturer and see if the have boiler manuals available online.
Before starting the conversion, you need to accurately evaluate the actual heating needs of the building (many older boilers are installed as much as 50% oversized). I would take the opportunity to replace the boiler fill valve, air separator, expansion tank, and the system circulator(s).
A great resource for water and steam heating questions and issues is at http://forums.invision.net/index.cfm?CFApp=2 , which is HeatingHelp.com, the Wall forum. Also, you may want to check out HVACTalk.com.
Tim,
Thanks for the info. I'll have to look into the pipes a bit more, just assumed they were galvanized. The building was built in the late 40's early 50's if that helps to know what kind of pipes.
I intend to change all of the acc. that you mentioned, even though some of them were changed 10 years ago. I'd rather start off with equipement I know has a good life span to it.
Thanks for those sites. I didn't know where to start looking.
Brent
One item to consider is your radiation capacity. Typically a fossil fuel boiler will run at 180 degree F. water temperature. An electric boiler typicaly runs at 140-160 degrees F. In really cold weather you may run into a lack of heat due to the cooler water temperature. This can be augmented by installing additional radiation surfaces or decrease the heat loss of the building envelope with additional insulation, etc. Roger
Roger,
Thanks, that's something I had no idea about. Right now the boiler runs about 170 and there is sufficient heat in the building, but I'm going to do more research on that.
These are the kind of things I need to hear from all you guys out there. I don't want to do the conversion just to find out after that I should have done something differently or that something crucial was overlooked. So please any and all advise is welcome.
Thanks
Brent