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Topics - wreckit87

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General Discussion / Drill bits
« on: May 20, 2020, 04:00:01 PM »
What's your favorite drill bit for carbon steel? I've bought about 20 different sets over the years all claiming to be the best and they all either dull very quickly, bend, or break when the final grab happens drilling though steel. DeWalt and Milwaukee I think were the worst, ironically enough. About all that's left is the $10 set from Harbor Freight but I'm pretty sure I'd have better luck trying to burn through steel by lighting that $10 bill on fire. I did recently buy a set of Irwin bits for my job trailer and they've been great but that's pretty light duty stuff for the most part so I don't know how they would perform in drill press duty. At this point I'd gladly pay top dollar for something that's not always dull or broken

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General Discussion / Wiring new garage
« on: May 08, 2020, 12:17:14 PM »
Hey guys, hope everyone is staying clear of the Chinese sneeze disease and keeping healthy. I put up a garage about a year and a half ago and have been slowly picking away at the finishes as I have time and ambition (not a common scenario). It's come time for the electrical now and I'm questioning some of my earlier decisions. This garage is actually built out of 4x10ft insulated panels repurposed from a couple walk-in freezers, so 3 walls and the whole ceiling are all 5" thick high density urethane foam with a 26ga galvalume sheet on each side for the finish. The 4th wall I stick framed from 2x6 to have structure for the 16ft overhead door and service door, then had it filled with closed cell spray foam to seal it up tight. This whole thing was set on top of a heated slab with thickened edges and I ran the electrical in through the slab to enter inside that gable wall, thinking I could bury the panel inside that wall and have a seamless look up there. I did mount the panel and had it all piped from the service entry and grounded to the rebar per code, then had the whole thing foamed in tight so now the panel is recessed into the wall. Given the nature of the freezer wall panels, I have to run exposed conduit which is fine- but I didn't think ahead far enough to figure out how to get from the recessed panel to surface mounted conduit without it looking ridiculous. I haven't sheeted the stick framed wall yet but plan to do it very soon, maybe this weekend, and did pick up a 6x6 pull box thinking maybe I'd mount it up high near the ceiling and recess it just the 1/2" depth of the sheathing so I can get a liquid tight elbow in the back of it and straight down to the panel with hard pipe. There will be 2 outlet circuits, 1 light circuit, 1 garage door circuit, and 1 220V circuit for the electric boiler all coming through here before splitting off so I set it up for 1" pipe and will run 1/2" to everything except the boiler will be 3/4" due to the 8ga wires. The more I think about it though, the more I think it's going to look ridiculous with the pull box hanging out there and an octopus of EMT coming out of it while the panel is nice and flush mounted with the sheathing. Anybody ever run into this sort of thing or have some input?

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General Outdoor Furnace Discussion / If one were to......
« on: July 15, 2018, 09:52:34 AM »
I've got a bit of a silly plan. I would like to set my new system up with a plate exchanger in the boiler cabinet and only run the house loop on a call for heat to minimize ground loss. I've got 170ft of 32mm Logstor buried and about 80ft of 1" PEX inside with a 40 plate for DHW and a 20x20 coil in the furnace plenum. There is also a small 20 plate for my snowmelt on a parallel loop and I will be adding another loop for a couple radiant walls in the basement. Where this gets fun, is I would also like to cut in a Lochinvar LP condensing boiler in the basement for backup and keep a meter on the gas line to monitor how many BTU I'm actually using. This would also serve as redundant backup for the shop, backfeeding through the OWB. I do have an electric boiler in there also, but my electric rate is ridiculous so I would like the ability to heat everything with LP. I realize DHW will suffer, but for the $10 a month it costs me to heat it with propane I'm not real worried about it. As many of you know, I'm electronically challenged so the wiring end of this has me confused. Is there a way I could delay the furnace blower from coming on for a minute until the incoming water (glycol, actually) is hot enough to distribute heat? And then also set it up so after the pump runs for a minute and water doesn't get hot (if the stove is out), that the Lochinvar kicks on and backs it up? I feel like I could use an aquastat or Ranco on the incoming line from the OWB like some of you do for your backup to keep the furnace from coming on, but I have 3 heat zones that will call from time to time- maybe run that through a zone controller? Is there a way to incorporate a timer to signal my Lochinvar to come on after 2 minutes of heat call with no heat from the OWB? I know this whole thing sounds ridiculous, but I can't leave well enough alone. What do you gents think?

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Plumbing / Radiant walls
« on: May 03, 2018, 06:32:24 PM »
Anyone ever experimented with radiant walls? My forte is radiant slabs and I've played with a few underfloor setups and radiant ceilings but never a radiant wall. I have been looking into it for my own basement in lieu of CI rads or baseboard to keep the area open, and had a customer call today wanting to do a floor overlay in his basement with an already 6'7" ceiling height so I suggested it to him also and he liked the sound of not having a 6'4" ceiling. I admittedly know very little about the whole transfer plates process, but it seems if a guy could notch the studs and fill the wall with transfer plates and X feet of tubing to be covered by sheetrock or whatever, should be able to heat the space similarly to an underfloor system. Mine at home will only require about 5k BTU to keep toasty, so I was kinda thinking of running a few loops of 1/2" down low, behind the wainscot, in the plates, 8" apart with a total loop of 250ish feet. Theoretically 1GPM should yield 7500 BTU at 15 degree delta T right? Or 15k at a 30 delta? Would be running boiler temp water through it and it'd only run when using the family room down there, otherwise the space stays 62-65 with no heat. Wall cavities have 2-3" of closed cell foam in them, so the majority ought to radiate outward and warm the space right? I'm really digging the idea if it works, hate to spend the money on radiant ceiling panels when the other route can be done at 1/8 the cost

5
For Sale / 2016 Heatmaster C375
« on: April 27, 2018, 12:53:19 PM »
Bought this stove new in November of 2016 after years of research and muddling with customer units trying to decide what was best. I'm heating either 4400 or 5200 sq ft plus domestic water, can usually go 12+ hours on 1/4 load of oak down to 10 degrees, but even -40 takes about 1/3 firebox full for 12 hours. Super efficient for a conventional stove; easy to operate and clean. I love the stove but some unforeseen circumstances have led me on another path and it is now for sale. Has been under a roof since day one and water has been treated and tested by Heatmaster, still connected and full of treated water at my house. Delivery and install is available within MN or western WI. Asking $7500 and located in Central MN. Thanks

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Hey guys. After a couple weeks of dreaming, I think I've decided to take the plunge and install a backup boiler in my basement. Got my fingies on a Lochinvar Knight 94% condensing boiler with a 5:1 turndown. The plan is to pipe a 50 plate into the OWB loop, before my A/W exchanger in the furnace plenum, and yes, I do already have an LP furnace for the house but it's more complicated than that. My shop is 3 feet from my OWB and is heated with the OWB. I do have an electric boiler in there as backup but the stupid thing costs $400/mo to run, thanks to the astronomical electric rates here. So the ultimate plan is to basically use the Knight to heat up the entirety of my OWB water to still be able to heat the shop in the event of a wood outage, vacation, etc. Essentially the return line to my OWB would now be the "supply" from the gas unit when running. Does anyone see an issue with dumping hotter water into the return ports on top and continuing to draw from the bottom ports to serve both buildings? I'm wondering if stratification is going to be an issue from dumping the hot water on top from the LP boiler but still dumping colder return water in the other top port from the shop? I am flowing about 16 GPM total with both loops so I should have a full exchange every 13 minutes or so, in theory.

I've installed a lot of these Knight units and have a pretty good understanding of them from a hydronic standpoint, but given my commercial nature, I don't touch the electronics. Now it seems to me that if I strap an aquastat on the incoming line to the plate from the OWB to activate the pump/boiler on the LP side when the OWB falls behind, it's going to want to run 100% until the aquastat is satisfied. Given the 5:1 turndown in this particular unit, I would like to utilize the turndown when possible to keep efficiency up a little bit if possible. Say I set that aquastat to kick the LP boiler on at 130 degree water temp from the OWB, but want it to maintain maybe 160 degrees while the Knight is running, how does one go about making the controls function? I'd ultimately like it to run 100% until it reaches 160 and then just maintain it at 20% fire or whatever. Seems like the aforementioned aquastat route isn't going to allow that to happen, but I'm electrically challenged so maybe I'm looking at it wrong.

Many questions, sorry. Some insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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General Discussion / Rude/ ungrateful children rant
« on: December 17, 2017, 10:48:29 AM »
So we had our first of several family Christmas gatherings yesterday with my immediate family. My brother and myself are both kidless and plan to keep it that way, but our sister has got 3 little boys 6,4, and 8 months. They had conception issues and whatnot so the kids were a great blessing for them, but they are fairly spoiled and get most anything they want with very little discipline. They can be polite when they want to be, but often times they are super rude and will NOT listen to anyone besides their parents. Well anyway, yesterday I got them each some gifts, my girlfriend got them some too, and they had to be reminded to say thank you at which point all they did was look at us for a second and take off. Whatever, it happens sometimes. Well my dad goes and buys these twerps a $2000 snowmobile and gives it to them. Anybody familiar with a Yamaha Sno-Scoot knows these things are a death trap for even a responsible kid much less one who only looks around to see who's watching instead of where he's going. These things go 40 mph and get there in a hurry. So the older one is tearing around the yard wide open and paying zero attention where he's going, so my dad tapes a block of wood behind the throttle to slow it down to 20 or so and the kid lost his mind. Went on a total rampage about how it's not fair and it's not fast enough, etc. Tore my parents' house apart with his tantrum, screaming his head off, so I just asked if he thought Grandpa should take it back to the store since it's too slow, and my sister comes unglued. Called me every name in the book and gave me the whole "when you have kids you can discipline them how you want to but you will never talk to my kids that way" bit, over a simple question. Well fast forward an hour his tantrum is over and I'm still pissed but okay, the little bastard has the audacity to have another fit that he didn't get enough presents. If that were my kid I'd light all his gifts on fire, but their response was that there will be more at the other Grandma's and more again when Santa comes, etc. I had to leave the room. Maybe I'm nuts because I don't have kids of my own, but that seems just plain rude and I kind of want to punch him in his rude little face. My girlfriend is super passive and LOVES kids, but when we got in the car to leave she lost her crap about this too, so I'm not alone. What do y'all parents think about it?

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Hey fellas, I'm hoping someone can shed some light on this for me. Next spring, I'm looking to build a new shop/shouse on some undeveloped acreage. Thinking 60x80 or 60x100 slab on grade with 2x6 walls, 20x40 sectioned off for temporary living quarters. The deal is, I plan to build an ICF house in a few years when finances allow, also slab on grade, on the same parcel and would like to have a small partial basement under both for the mechanical rooms. I know it's a sin here but this will be Geothermal in both buildings with a solar array on the shop roof, both of which have far too many credits to overlook and will put me money ahead in 8 years. When the house goes up, I intend to build an ICF tunnel connecting the two because I hate winter and like secret rooms. I've talked to 3 different local concrete companies and they all think I'm nuts (I probably am) and that it's impossible, but I don't see any reason why one couldn't do what I want as long as there's a frost footing around the perimeter under the slab so it's monolithic. Shouldn't be any different than an attached garage when the house has a basement, right? They move together in bad frost upheaval with a proper frost wall, why couldn't a monolithic slab? I've spent days on Google trying to find some information and have had zero luck. Anyone ever done such a thing?

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Electronics / Zone control for both 120V pump and 24V zone valves?
« on: October 26, 2017, 07:55:48 PM »
This is going to be easy for any of you who understand electricity, but I absolutely do not; so please bear with me. I have a customer with an existing clusterf*uck. Long story short, he has 2 zones of in-floor run off the open boiler loop utilizing a single 007. I am going to pipe in a 20 plate HX and separate the floor loops from the boiler loop, mixing the temp down. My thought is to add a single circ off the HX, which would only run when the zone valves are powered open. Can I use a Taco switching relay to power the pump, with the "thermostat" lugs being powered via a jumper to the zone valve/stat circuit? It seems to me that the existing 24v should be able to stay intact, with simply jumpers over to the lugs in the switching relay to run the pump for either zone- am I nuts? :-\

10
So I piped an OWB into a guy's existing system yesterday. Boiler loop heats a 20 plate, Taco 007 draws hot water from the plate, through a mixer, into a Lennox Q90-100 LP boiler which serves an 8 loop radiant system. Now, I've done this dozens of times before and left the wiring up to someone smart, it works out fine but I've never seen a boiler like this Lennox that has no setpoint control. The only aquastat is a high limit, and when operating the boiler puts out 120 degree water and short cycles every 90 seconds or so. I turned the mixing valve up to 130 thinking it'd cut out the gas burner while the stat continued to spin the pump, which it did once the supply water had reached temp. Problem is though, that the inducer fan never shuts off. And every 5 minutes or so, the igniter would light up and gas valve open, fire the burner for 3 seconds and then shut down again.

Given the insulation quality and size of the loops, I want to run 100ish degree water through the mixer instead of 130. At that, the gas burner will want to run all the time. Dude wants to keep the Lennox in operation if possible as a backup and to keep the OWB loop from freezing up if need be, so adding another stat to power the pump only was all my feeble mind could produce. He wants to do the electrical himself, so I was wondering if any of you gentlemen could explain this to me so I have some insight on what to tell him. I'm at a loss. Thanks in advance

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Site Suggestions / Like/Tag option?
« on: October 16, 2017, 11:31:24 AM »
Maybe it's just me and my stupid millenial tendencies, but does anyone else enjoy the option to like a post, or to tag another member so they'd get a notification? I feel like a troubleshooting issue or something where someone might want to ask another member something directly but keep it public would be a lot better served if there were a way to let them know instead of hoping they stumble across the thread again someday. I'm used to the ProBoards format which has those options and just shows a notification next time you log in. Or is that already a thing here and I'm too dumb to find it?

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