Yesterday at 3:30pm I got "finished" with my install and lit a fire in my new Empyre. At 4:45, temp on the furnace was 170* and I flipped the switch on my thermostat. No more propane!
It was an interesting experience, installing this thing... My house is old (built in 1891), and the plumbing was last worked on in the 80's. My water heater, per the tag on the door, was installed in 1964 (!!!). This is what I started with:
I was waiting on some other parts but had my 20-plate exchanger here, so I decided I'd start by plumbing my domestic lines to it. As you can imagine with a mixture of galvanized, hard copper, soft copper, and plastic water lines, every time I touched a fitting something broke. :-( I gave up about 30 minutes in, and made a trip to town for enough parts to re-plumb the whole thing. Ran all new CPVC (couldn't afford copper!) everywhere, and wasted an entire day. Also replaced the water heater, because when I drained the old GE the nastiest, smelliest, rustiest gunk you can imagine came out of it, and I couldn't bring myself to plumb it back in. Luckily I had this near-new AO Smith sitting in the shed, and was able to use it.
I remember, now, why I didn't choose to be a plumber... Much respect to those guys, because there's no way I could do that every day. So anyway I got all the plumbing done, and my plate exchanger mounted, and now it looks like this:
I realized,
after I turned the water back on, that I forgot to put a ball valve in the by-pass line (doh!), so I added that. Then we start drilling a hole in the foundation wall. Do you know how hard ~100 yr. old hand-poured concrete is? It's friggin'
Hard, is how hard it is! I started in on it with just a hammer drill, but shortly admitted defeat and called a buddy with a rotary hammer. That made short work of things, so now there's a hole in the wall. On to digging some trenches:
Dug through every root on the farm, I think, plus an abandoned drain tile that gave me some concern until I figured out it was indeed dead, but I got the trenches dug, the lines laid in, the propane tank moved, and the furnace on its pad all that day. I was happy with that.
Now back to the basement, where I cut a hole in my furnace plenum:
Installed my heat exchanger in there, taped it up, and moved on to hooking up my furnace lines. This went exceptionally well (somehow!), and my helper and I had minimal problems getting them all where they were supposed to go. Wired up the pump and the furnace, and the inside is finished:
By-pass for the furnace exchanger (needs one more clamp to hold it up):
Exchanger plumbed up:
And we're all done inside. I need to foam the foundation hole and get my hydraulic cement in, and get my DHW lines insulated, but other than that it's all (I think!) good. Moving on outside then, where we hook up the furnace:
And add 6' of chimney and a cap:
So far (~28 hrs. later), so good! I need to do some tidy-ing up (insulation, finish the hole in the wall, a few more clamps inside, etc.), and I want to put thermometers on my pex lines inside and outside so I can watch my temps, but overall I'm pretty pleased. This thing is working great so far, and other than sore hands from drilling through that concrete I have no complaints. House is staying a comfy 73*, and the fan isn't running near like it did on propane. My wife is happy, happy, happy! :-)
I have the stove set on 180*, with a 10* differential. Seems to be working well. My B&G pump is a 3-speed, and right now I have it set in the middle. This is a question I have - should I set it on high?
Anyway, that's the adventure of my installation. I'd like to thank this site for the absolute wealth of information I've gleaned here. Using the search, reading through threads, and talking with Scott and others, made this experience much, MUCH less painful thatn it otherwise would have been. For that, you all can consider me permanently in your debt. Thank You!!
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