Seisco boiler?'s

[will02]

I have a 2 year old shop (40x60 with a 15x25 separate office) with in floor heat with a Seisco tank less boiler running 2 separate zones (shop/office). It seems to be not keeping up this year and the heat bills have been ungodly! It has been a brutal winter so far, but never seemed to have as much trouble holding temps. I set it at 64 in the shop and 66 in the office and most days this year it has been about 58 in the shop and 56 or so in the office and the boiler runs all day! My real question is what should the pressure and temperature gauge at the top of the boiler read? The guy who sold us the unit (we built and installed it)said to bump up the pressure to around 14lbs as it seems to have dropped to about 7-8 lbs. And give him a call if it doesn't help. Will that actually make it that inefficient? It is only about 85* on that gauge, seems like it should be higher than that, but don't want to bump the temp up if it is just going to use more juice for no good reason. The manual has nothing about what either setting should be, just how to increase or decrease both. It goes into the floor about 83* and returns about 73*. Anyway-any input would be appreciated as I don't need a $100 service call for a quick fix, and I have a few friends coming up this weekend to drink beer and goof off. One happens to be a plumber (who actually put this together) but not a HVAC guy, so he said to post on here and see what any of you think. I won't be able to check back until tommorrow afternoon if any more input is needed. Any thoughts would be appreciated, here is a picture of the unit.

 

[tdkkart]

Hello,
I just installed a Seisco boiler this weekend, in an attempt to get my heating costs under control, not sure it helped much. But being very near you, I'm glad I'm not the only one in the same boat. I know whah it's costing me, can't imagine what it's costing you to heat 5x as much space.

Anyway,
One of two problems, either your boiler isn't working right(bad element??), or something got changed and you have too much flow through the boiler, not allowing the heater to heat the water fast enough.
You should be getting at least 100-105*(minimum setting) out of the outlet side of the boiler.

#1: Here is the service and troubleshooting guide from Seisco:
http://www.ttherm.com/SEISCO/PDF/SEISCOTesting_Service_Repair_Guide.pdf
Read through, particularly the error code section and see if your boiler thinks it has a problem, based on the status light.

#2 make sure your valves are all set where they should be, and your pump speeds etc are right. If it was working OK last year and not this year something has changed.
I don't believe system pressure will have that much effect, if it does I'm gonna bump mine up too. Seisco recommends 10lbs with the pump running.

Also, I see something in the picture that bothers me......
I see the outlet side pipe, comes out the top, has a pressure/temp gauge and a pressure pop-off I assume. Then the pipe goes down the side of the boiler and makes a 90 right at the lower left of the boiler.

Then, I see the return side of the boiler, pipe comes from that, past the bubbler/vent, down to the pump and pressure tank, then 90's over and connects 6" below the outlet side pipe. Is it just my eyes, or are the inlet and outlet pipes connected together there??
That don't seem right??

Watch your PM's in the next couple days we need to get together and compare heating notes.....

 

[will02]

The outlet and inlet are in the same loop, no sure why, we just followed the diagram from the floor heat company. I will have the erorr codes checked out this weekend and see what explanation for the loop I can get. I'm sure noboy has messed with it since last year, don't know why the pressure dropped since then, supposed to be pretty much maintennce free. Thanks for taking a look, I'll keep you informed on what we come up with.

 

[hotdiva54]

oh thats good

 

[sixty4]

Sorry for the ignorance but is that a boiler with electric heating elements?

 

[will02]

Basicly an oversized electric tankless water heater.

 

[sixty4]

Thats what I thought. Why not a gas or LP unit? I am not knocking your system but still curious,this is the first one I have seen. I would pull the heating elements and check for contintuity perhaps you are only working off 1 element? Thats what I do with electric hot water heaters.

 

[tdkkart]

If one of his elements is bad the error code check should tell him which one it is, just a matter of pulling the cover off and referencing the service guide I listed above.

The electric heaters work really slick, however it costs alot of money to produce enough BTU's to heat even a small space with the winter we're having here in Iowa. I think it's only been above freezing once since Christmas, and days like today with a high temp of +16* have been more the norm. Today was the warmest of the last 3, this morning's low temp was -13*.
Start entering delta temps of 50-60 degrees into a heat loss calculator and things get really ugly in a hurry.............

 

[will02]

Thats what I thought. Why not a gas or LP unit? I am not knocking your system but still curious,this is the first one I have seen. I would pull the heating elements and check for contintuity perhaps you are only working off 1 element? Thats what I do with electric hot water heaters.

My shop is kind of out in the middle of nowhere, no natural gas available and I live 3+miles away where I am thinking LP would be a hastle. Hopefully when I run the codes this weekend, it will give me an idea where to look. TDKKART is right, it has been a brutal winter where it has been below 0 more that above for the last 2 months, and we have at least 3 months of winter left!

 

[tdkkart]

WOO HOO!!! It's 25* out right now, course it's almost 2am and that's suppose to be the high for the day, back to 17 for a high Friday........

 

[sixty4]

WINTER ***** (I am ready for summer already out here in CT)! I am sure you will find the problem!! I am building my 40x 30 garage as I type. Its about 27 degrees out here with a high of 32 expected. I feel bad for the guys trying to put this thing up in this weather! It snowed yesterday and then rained last night. We just spent an hour getting the tarps off the lumber and moving the **** (ice/snow) from around the garage. I am going with a Peerless Purefire Hot water boiler for radiant and air handler. I guess I am lucky I have a 1000 gal propane tank in the ground.

 

[drewalt]

Has anybody used an Argo Electric boiler or compared the Seisco vs. Argo?

 

[Weedwaka]

I do not know about Argo but you should look into the Hydro Shark III models . They are converted Steibel Eltron Tempra's.

I almost picked up a Seisco but the staggering number of bad reviews stating quality issues and repeated failures scared me away. The old hydro sharks were Seisco's but they have since stopped using them and switched over to Steibel Eltron models.

 

[custom1]

I'm curious. Was there ever a solution to the OP's problem in this tread. I was hoping to have a Seisco boiler in my future.
I have my pex in and slab done, wiring this week, still need to insulate/drywall, and probably won't be getting a boiler till next winter.
Also, What size Seisco boilers(SH-?) are you guys using / building size. Mine is 28x36 12' ceiling. R-19 walls and R-38 ceiling. I know, I know, I need to do a heat load calc.

John

 

[rburke65]

Curious myself, and I'll give it a bump!

 

[drewalt]

bump again

 

[will02]

Sorry to have disappeared, I haven't been on the Garage Journal site for awhile. I did bump up the pressure to 14 lbs and it seemed to run a lot less and keep up. Everything else checked out fine. As you can see from my origional post, it was the end of January/Early Feb before I did this and the nastiest of the weather was done for the year as far as heat bills are concerned. I did check last night and the pressure has held at 14lbs and it was real nice and warm out there. We are looking at our first real nasty storm tonight and tommorrow, in fact it is starting to look kind of crappy now. We are supposed to get a foot of snow, 5 below 0 with up to 60MPH winds. I'll let you know how it keeps up in a couple of days!

 

[drewalt]

I do not know about Argo but you should look into the Hydro Shark III models . They are converted Steibel Eltron Tempra's.

I almost picked up a Seisco but the staggering number of bad reviews stating quality issues and repeated failures scared me away. The old hydro sharks were Seisco's but they have since stopped using them and switched over to Steibel Eltron models.

Well, I finally did it. Ended up with the Argo boiler. Pic attached.