When I was a young HVAC tech, I bought a house with an oil hot water system in it. The previous owner used a certain oil company and had them clean and tune the boiler. It had a 1.75 GHP nozzle in it and drank oil. I cleaned it and installed a new Carlin gun with a .75 GPH nozzle and cut my usage way down. It had one of those Honeywell dampers on it. Never let your oil company tune and clean your boilers. They just want to sell you more oil by far than you need. Thanks for the video.
When i was a young tech & customers would ask me is it worth it to switch from standing pilot to Electronic ignition I Allways told them no. 2 reasons. 1) If it ain't broke don't fix it. 2) maybe save a $1.00/month on gas bill. Costs $300.00 min to install. So you spend $300.00 to save $144.00 over 12 years makes no sense. So your in the hole $150.00 on average. Customers are like ok. Thanks for the heads up on that. All very thankful for the honesty & not just up selling them. Good video. Like # 39.
This is very interesting, thanks for making this video! Maybe consider a video like this talking about energy saving technologies for AC systems also? I think that would be a good video.
Haven't seen or pulled out any of those motorized flue dampers BUT i have pulled out a lot of those bi-metallic ones. They do look kinda neat when you hit them with a torch to get them to move. Three years before i was born my dad bought a brand new 1980 Volkswagen Rabbit diesel. He bought it because of the fuel crisis. I barely remember that little car but I do remember it was HUGE lemon LOL. I remember my father constantly fixing it 😆. Everything broke on it!
My Father built a timing device that did just what one of those "brains" did.. Then came the high efficiency single stage furnaces in the 90s that seemed undersized where " less is more" and were intended to run almost continuously to maintain temp so it seemed. Now they have it correct it appears with 2 stage or modulating high efficiency furnaces.
I don't speak English but I'm going to try. Baltur, what is a Italian burner use a little piece o sheet tha is lifted by the air flow, when the motor turn off, the damper fall off and that reduce the lost of energy induced for the draft air through the burner. Obviously it doesn´t apply in atmosferic burners.
You did quite well. A damper actuated by the moving air can be effective. It must be installed with a pressure switch that will indicate if it has jammed. GFM
I often wondered if a standard pilot used any gas worth counting. I don't work on furnaces that often but I still love the simplicity of the 80% with the induced draft fan.
I still see this stuff all the time, they don't really save anything utility cost wise but what they do very well is put customers in harms way. Many of the bi-metal, electromechanical, and sail style flue dampers I see don't work or respond to slowly and were not installed with spill switches so flue gas just dumps into home☠. My favorite tho is the California Econimizer(not zoning) blower control for a belt drive furnace. Takes heat from the plenum down to a thermal clutch on blower to control fan speed, ahhh good stuff. I'm a younger guy but in my neck of the woods I see some old controls.
Have a question ,you had video looking down fire chamber for what the flame should look like,could you throw quick video of how it should look like when looking in inspection door on a miller furnace with correct air flow
Hi ,great video,question you did a video on control unit for beckette furnace ,the one I got is held on with one screw sideways right on hosting where can I get the mounting plate it’s soppiest to go on
I see a lot of these electric vent dampers in Steven Lavimoniere's videos that are shot in Massachussetts where hot water heating is common. They are not on furnaces but on the gas boilers he services. The boilers with them don't look all that old to me. Steve even explains in one video that the hole plugged with the snap in cover (visible on the damper in this video) in the damper plate is supposed to be removed if the boiler has a standing pilot. This hole is meant to be large enough to vent any exhaust from the pilot while the damper is shut.
Boilers are still made with them. The reason being boilers have a lot of thermal mass. When they are off, there is a lot of heat in them if they are cast iron. So you will continue to see them. GFM
I really hated adding pilot spark ignition. They were so temperamental to find the sweet spot of air fuel mix A neat instruction video might be how to bypass a defective bypass switch and what happens when you plug a damper into a boiler control
what do you think about the ultra low NOx furnace? theyre mandatory here in so cal so were trying to do more heap pumps while they work out the kinks xD
I have my doubts they will ever be common. The movement is toward electric and away from any type of fossil fuel. We all have our opinions, but this is the way it is going. GFM
Wonder what ever happened to "Blue Ray" oil furnaces of the 80's? They could hit 93% efficiency if you diddled it just right. They never seemed to actually fire a blue flame...More of a pink color usually but "Pink Ray" doesn't sound manly to me. Seems the higher efficiency the more condensation and corrosion in the stack ...
I have never heard of it. However, I did research it. There was a CO problem that caused some deaths and they were recalled. I would love to have one to test. Certainly going past 80% efficiency would cause condensation and subsequent damage. GFM
That time period was one of many changes. Take a look at an automobile made in 1970, then look at one made in the late 1980s. Both energy efficiency and environmental impact drove these changes. And those changes never come easy. GFM
I just want to say thanks to GreyFurnaceMan. You have been in my watch list for many many years. Thanks for what you do.
Thanks for the support.
GFM
When I was a young HVAC tech, I bought a house with an oil hot water system in it. The previous owner used a certain oil company and had them clean and tune the boiler. It had a 1.75 GHP nozzle in it and drank oil. I cleaned it and installed a new Carlin gun with a .75 GPH nozzle and cut my usage way down. It had one of those Honeywell dampers on it. Never let your oil company tune and clean your boilers. They just want to sell you more oil by far than you need. Thanks for the video.
Awesome description! And now i got to figure out how your radiant heater setup works. Awesome!!!!
When i was a young tech & customers would ask me is it worth it to switch from standing pilot to Electronic ignition I Allways told them no. 2 reasons. 1) If it ain't broke don't fix it. 2) maybe save a $1.00/month on gas bill. Costs $300.00 min to install. So you spend $300.00 to save $144.00 over 12 years makes no sense. So your in the hole $150.00 on average. Customers are like ok. Thanks for the heads up on that. All very thankful for the honesty & not just up selling them. Good video. Like # 39.
This is very interesting, thanks for making this video! Maybe consider a video like this talking about energy saving technologies for AC systems also? I think that would be a good video.
Haven't seen or pulled out any of those motorized flue dampers BUT i have pulled out a lot of those bi-metallic ones. They do look kinda neat when you hit them with a torch to get them to move. Three years before i was born my dad bought a brand new 1980 Volkswagen Rabbit diesel. He bought it because of the fuel crisis. I barely remember that little car but I do remember it was HUGE lemon LOL. I remember my father constantly fixing it 😆. Everything broke on it!
My Father built a timing device that did just what one of those "brains" did.. Then came the high efficiency single stage furnaces in the 90s that seemed undersized where " less is more" and were intended to run almost continuously to maintain temp so it seemed. Now they have it correct it appears with 2 stage or modulating high efficiency furnaces.
Wish there was a variation of a infrared tube heater packed into a furnace
Nice video GFM
Why would you want that?
I don't speak English but I'm going to try. Baltur, what is a Italian burner use a little piece o sheet tha is lifted by the air flow, when the motor turn off, the damper fall off and that reduce the lost of energy induced for the draft air through the burner. Obviously it doesn´t apply in atmosferic burners.
You did quite well.
A damper actuated by the moving air can be effective. It must be installed with a pressure switch that will indicate if it has jammed.
GFM
I often wondered if a standard pilot used any gas worth counting.
I don't work on furnaces that often but I still love the simplicity of the 80% with the induced draft fan.
some of the older conversion burners had a huge pilot light and did eat gas, then again compared to the single massive burner it was nothing :)
I still see this stuff all the time, they don't really save anything utility cost wise but what they do very well is put customers in harms way. Many of the bi-metal, electromechanical, and sail style flue dampers I see don't work or respond to slowly and were not installed with spill switches so flue gas just dumps into home☠. My favorite tho is the California Econimizer(not zoning) blower control for a belt drive furnace. Takes heat from the plenum down to a thermal clutch on blower to control fan speed, ahhh good stuff. I'm a younger guy but in my neck of the woods I see some old controls.
Have a question ,you had video looking down fire chamber for what the flame should look like,could you throw quick video of how it should look like when looking in inspection door on a miller furnace with correct air flow
Hi ,great video,question you did a video on control unit for beckette furnace ,the one I got is held on with one screw sideways right on hosting where can I get the mounting plate it’s soppiest to go on
thankd gfm
I see a lot of these electric vent dampers in Steven Lavimoniere's videos that are shot in Massachussetts where hot water heating is common. They are not on furnaces but on the gas boilers he services. The boilers with them don't look all that old to me. Steve even explains in one video that the hole plugged with the snap in cover (visible on the damper in this video) in the damper plate is supposed to be removed if the boiler has a standing pilot. This hole is meant to be large enough to vent any exhaust from the pilot while the damper is shut.
Boilers are still made with them. The reason being boilers have a lot of thermal mass. When they are off, there is a lot of heat in them if they are cast iron. So you will continue to see them.
GFM
I really hated adding pilot spark ignition. They were so temperamental to find the sweet spot of air fuel mix
A neat instruction video might be how to bypass a defective bypass switch and what happens when you plug a damper into a boiler control
what do you think about the ultra low NOx furnace? theyre mandatory here in so cal so were trying to do more heap pumps while they work out the kinks xD
I have my doubts they will ever be common. The movement is toward electric and away from any type of fossil fuel. We all have our opinions, but this is the way it is going.
GFM
Wonder what ever happened to "Blue Ray" oil furnaces of the 80's? They could hit 93% efficiency if you diddled it just right. They never seemed to actually fire a blue flame...More of a pink color usually but "Pink Ray" doesn't sound manly to me. Seems the higher efficiency the more condensation and corrosion in the stack ...
I have never heard of it. However, I did research it. There was a CO problem that caused some deaths and they were recalled. I would love to have one to test.
Certainly going past 80% efficiency would cause condensation and subsequent damage.
GFM
What yr you start the trade? How old were you? Enjoy your videos.
1977 around 30.
GFM
Probably those dampers were good for old boilers where water flows all the time
Even new cast iron boilers use them due to the high thermal mass of the boiler.
GFM
The 70s and 80s sometime l often wonder what were they thinking. Like today stuff is over engineered. What happened to common sense
That time period was one of many changes. Take a look at an automobile made in 1970, then look at one made in the late 1980s.
Both energy efficiency and environmental impact drove these changes. And those changes never come easy.
GFM