This section is your guide to hot-water heating systems with information about system design and piping, air elimination, pumping away, primary-secondary pumping, valves, radiators, troubleshooting tips, and more.
When servicing old hot-water heating systems that originally circulated by gravity, but now use circulating pumps, I began to notice a lot of oversized circulators. In so...
I was lucky to have had as one of my teachers the late, great Gil Carlson. Gil was Bell & Gossett’s Director of Technical Services and when he would come to New York City...
In 1970, I went to work for a manufacturers rep on the Isle of Long and I fell in love with hydronics. We sold Bell & Gossett and one of the elder salesmen took me aside ...
About eight blocks from my house in Baltimore, there is a large two-family house with an equally large hot-water heating system that originally circulated by gravity. The...
When you look in a boiler manufacturer's catalog you'll see that there are several types of ratings for each boiler. There's the Input rating, the Gross Output rating (wh...
I am often asked about troubleshooting a thermocouple on gas systems. This will be a permanent reference that will give a step-by-step procedure: A thermocouple is a devi...
A question asked on the Wall, "Who, in your opinion, makes the best modulating-condensing boiler?" Andrew Hagen replies: My favorites in order: 1. Viessmann Vitodens 2. T...
"We haven't had decent heat since that heating contractor left our basement." She was about as angry as any homeowner who had ever called me. "We paid good money for that...
A question asked on the Wall, "What do I need to consider with a hot-water system running on constant circulation?" Mark Eatherton replies: It has to be designed into the...
The boilers (and there were 20 of them) were laying out there in the parking lot, not far from the boiler room door. I could see them as Joe and I drove up. “Nobody knows...