Love is blindness

This is part of the wiring for the water pumps for the hot water heat system. There are two pumps, each with its own Federal Pacific switch. There's a low-voltage transformer, and two boxes made by Honeywell of unknown utility. I should take a look at them later to determine exactly what they are for. There's a lot of stuff down there that I'm not quite sure what it's for. I don't need the extra space, so I'm not actively pursuing this issue.

Do you see the problem here? I'm not quite sure how I didn't see it before. It's not the Federal Pacific switches - they were made before the quality of the company's products went downhill. Follow the low-voltage wiring for the pumps up. Yeah. Wire connectors just sitting out there in the open, outside a box.

They're only low-voltage, and they're in a place that is not likely to be filled with combustibles anytime soon, but still I should address that. One more thing for the list, I guess.

Thinking Warm Thoughts

Over the holidays, I talked with my father-in-law, an HVAC tech, about my current boiler and possible future options. Our system is hot water, which lends us to greater efficiency potential than is possible with a steam heat system. He had just installed a Burnham Alpine boiler in the church across the street, and had primarily good things to say about the company. As a tech, he appreciates that it is still easy to get parts, quickly, for 35+ year old systems, while some other manufacturers discontinue parts after 10 years.

Although he wasn't able to give specific numbers, he thought, given our usage, that a new boiler would probably pay for itself in 5 or so years. The problem becomes then one of determining how we will pay the $5000-7000 that it will probably cost for the purchase and installation of the system.

The issue that this brings to mind for me, however, is one of venting. The Burnham Alpine uses PVC pipes for ventilation. High efficiency boilers and hot water heaters have special ventilation requirements to meet and as a result of their higher efficiency. They draw air in from outside because it is cleaner, and therefore burns more efficently than, say, sawdust or humidity laden air. They must exhaust outside, rather than into the chimney because their exhaust is cooler, more humid, and more dense, and would lead quickly to the collapse of the chimney in just a few years.

The normal installation would be to just run the vent pipes through the wall of the house. I find the idea of two bright white PVC pipes poking through the wall of my house rather unattractive. Yes, they could be painted to match the brick, but I'm still not completely comfortable with that solution.

One alternative that my father-in-law suggested was to run the vent pipes up the existing chimney. Our boiler and hot water heater use one chimney, while our fireplaces use another, so this wouldn't be a problem. He thought it wouldn't be too difficult to run things that way - just a matter of dropping two or three lengths of PVC pipe down the chimney. While this would cost more, I think the result is worthwhile.

This all leads me to thinking about the hot water heater and its eventual replacement with a tankless model. Tankless hot water heaters have their own special ventilation requirements, which seem to tend toward stainless steel, but which could probably be fit into the chimney if necessary. If I could settle on one system, it seems that it might be reasonable to drop in the vent pipe for the water heater at the same time as the vent pipe is being installed for the boiler.

Of course, I'd love to hear other ideas, including less ugly ways to conceal vents run through walls.

The worst way to plumb an icemaker?

We were told by the previous owner that the icemaker in the fridge didn't work because there wasn't any plumbing running to it. When the refrigerator was replaced, we found that there was, in fact, a copper line running to the icemaker, but it was crushed, as the refrigerator had rolled over it. I asked A. to buy a new line for it, which turned out to be about 8" too short. When I was able to extend the line, I found that the pipe it connected to was warm to the touch - not something that you want with an icemaker, but one that caused my parents trouble with their icemaker for years.

I looked at the pipe, but it wasn't connected obviously to the hot water heater, so I set this problem aside to deal with another day, after I'd had time to think about it. This time, the line was hot to the touch. I traced the pipe to the extent that I was able to - and found that it ran into the boiler! Eeew.