Hydronic Heating Components

Yeah, so we really got into hydronics pretty heavy this week, and a lot of good information.

Being in Atlanta, I did not get to really participate in a lot of any hydronics here, because it's all air, basically, unless you're in a commercial setting.

So, yeah, a lot of good information, some what to do, what not to do.

But, I mean, one of the big things we started talking about was what kind of setup are we going to have with our hot water? Are we going to have a single-pass system or are we going to have a multi-pass system? So, I mean, on a single pass, we're looking, that's typically more efficient, right? So we're incorporating a swing tank and we're running our return water into the swing tank versus just putting it straight back into the storage tank.

This is typically a lot more efficient.

You're going to get a better storage, I guess, load, if you want to call it that.

And then also, you can store at a much higher temperature, right? We can keep it up to 140 degrees.

We can kill the Legionella immediately or within seconds, minutes of it being in the tank.

And, you know, once it passes over to our swing tank, we can drop that temperature back down to about 120 and 125.

Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about how stratified storage tanks are working.

So basically, we are pulling water in through the top of the stratified tank, and we're trying to keep a water column inside the tank, the top being hotter, the bottom being colder, but we're trying to have a mix in between there, but we're not trying to cycle that tank a lot.

So we're trying to pull that 140-degree water off the top of that tank As we're mixing and sending it over to the swing tank, but we're trying to keep a temperature difference there.

And this was one of the biggest things that was mentioned this week about this setup in particular is that they've been seeing a lot of guys setting both the set points for the tanks at 140 degrees.

So from the stratified tank to the swing tank.

And then they are ending up with a bunch of short cycling issues.

Right.

The contactors banging on and off constantly.

So we should be – what

temperature difference should we be looking at here?

I mean, at a minimum, we want to see about 15 degrees, right? But typically about 20 degree differential.

And then we can send it from there up through the building, depending on where our tanks are at.

If they're, you know, are they on the roof where the outdoor unit is or are they down in a mechanical closet in the basement?

I never even thought about that difference either.

Like I never thought about putting the tanks or the whole unit on the roof, which makes a lot more sense because now that water is descending and instead of us trying to push that pressure up, it makes a lot more sense to me now putting everything on that roof.

Right.