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angryrobots posted:I don't think there's any danger of that water tank becoming a pressure vessel, lmao I mean not for long anyways. Something something moment of inertia.
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Nov 13, 2019 19:32
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One more question: how hot are vents connected to a heater supposed to get? While I was down there, I noticed that the inflow (i.e. not-return) vents are pretty cold while the furnace is on and generating hot air. The air itself is also not nearly as hot as I would expect for how hard the heater seems to be working to keep up with my thermostat. Gonna bring it up with the landlords either way, but shouldn't the vents be hot or at least warm to the touch? There is one vent that is always really, really hot that's connected to the heater, but it doesn't seem to connect to my apartment as far as I can tell. That, or it's a gas line meant to go to my oven/stove that's connected to my heater for some reason. I have no idea what kind of vent it is - any clues here?  Return vents connecting to bottom of heater. Cold.  Intake vents going out of top of heater. Slightly less cold.    Mystery vent. Hot. Does not connect to my apartment. In fact, it connects to what appears to be...a brick pillar? EDIT: The specs suggest that hot tube is connected to the inducer assembly. Not sure what that its. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Nov 13, 2019 |
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Nov 13, 2019 20:28
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Pollyanna posted:Mystery vent. Hot. Does not connect to my apartment. In fact, it connects to what appears to be...a brick pillar? We call those brick pillars 'chimneys' and those mystery vents 'flue pipes'.
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Nov 13, 2019 20:44
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o  Doing more research, it’s probably not worth trying to go after it much past cleaning the vents. Everything else is talking about smaller ductwork n poo poo and that is not happening. Maybe I’m getting too worked up, but gently caress man, it’s cold. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Nov 13, 2019 |
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Nov 13, 2019 20:53
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Pollyanna posted:
There's probably not much you can do aside from insulating the underside of the floor, and that is something that is not worth your time or money to do if you're renting. I guess throwing down a bunch of rugs would help? Plastic on the windows is at least a cheap and quick thing to do, doesn't really hurt to try it. Sorry about your water heater. A quick googling gave me this link. http://doubledaylaw.com/massachusetts-tenant-law-and-hot-water/ quote:What do you do if your landlord is violating your right to hot water? Now I guess you still technically have hot water, but you're very close to not having hot water. So I would at least start with #1 now, and possibly think about #2 as well.
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Nov 13, 2019 22:32
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Bird in a Blender posted:Now I guess you still technically have hot water, but you're very close to not having hot water. Or perhaps far too much hot water.
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Nov 13, 2019 23:08
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Hot water but not where I need it.
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Nov 13, 2019 23:09
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Just widen that hole on top a little bit and you've yourself a perfectly good basement shower.
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Nov 13, 2019 23:29
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Pollyanna posted:Hot water but not where I need it. Hot water, in my basement? It’s more likely than you think.
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Nov 14, 2019 00:18
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The more I mess with the heating, the more I figure it's more of an over-time thing. I have to regularly overshoot the temperature by ~4 degrees in order to get the temp I want (set 72 to get 67~68), but as long as the heating is working, it gets to where I want it to be in about 20 minutes. I hope this doesn't mean I'm wasting a bunch of gas, though.
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Nov 14, 2019 01:55
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There's no way you're wasting more gas than that water heater.
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Nov 14, 2019 02:50
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Do you have a hygrometer? Some extra humidity in the rooms you occupy most might make the weak heat more bearable.
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Nov 14, 2019 04:16
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SpartanIvy posted:There's no way you're wasting more gas than that water heater. I thought heated forced air was pretty expensive? And I wonder how common it is to have to overshoot on a thermostat. Thermostats shut off when they detect that they’ve reached the desired temp, right? Maybe it is hitting my desired temp, and my readout is wrong. Or do gas furnaces have their own limits on how long they can run at a time? What happens if a heater is just unable to bring a room up to the desired temp? Will it run forever? Is that a known problem? Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Nov 14, 2019 |
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Nov 14, 2019 21:59
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The water heater is probably running most of the time trying to heat up the cold water that is constantly being introduced from the hot water leaking out.
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Nov 14, 2019 22:11
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Either way:   
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Nov 15, 2019 00:31
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That's actually a good unit and not a bottom of the barrel. I'm impressed!
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Nov 15, 2019 00:46
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SpartanIvy posted:That's actually a good unit and not a bottom of the barrel. I'm impressed! Eh....that's still a $300 Home Depot special. It just looks like a better one. But absolutely anything is better than the last one so whatever.
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Nov 15, 2019 01:10
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Motronic posted:Eh....that's still a $300 Home Depot special. It just looks like a better one. Plus, they rent. Assuming they aren't paying for the gas into that thing who cares?
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Nov 15, 2019 01:20
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Love the old, crusty solder work that looks like it was their first time ever using a torch. Hope the gas was hooked up correctly, given that I doubt any licensed plumber would not replace more of those lines and also wouldn't use sharkbites. Either way, better than it was.
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Nov 15, 2019 01:50
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Sharkbite: I'm too cheap for pro-press, but not skilled to to do hotwork.
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Nov 15, 2019 02:03
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Given how receptive they were to the problems once I showed up at their doorstep and how awful the infrastructure in this slumhouse is (we didn't have breakers until earlier this year), I suspect that my landlords are being taken for a ride by some really, really incompetent maintenance company. That, or the maintenance company is getting stonewalled for some ungodly reason, because as an engineer myself I wouldn't be able to let that poo poo slide either. Not to give my landlords any benefit of the doubt, of course. Whatever, I'll have my own house someday.
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Nov 15, 2019 02:12
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Nice of them to write your apartment number in blood as a warning. SpartanIvy posted:That's actually a good unit and not a bottom of the barrel. I'm impressed! I guess someone got Rheemed out for letting it get that bad.
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Nov 15, 2019 11:15
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Is it worth trying to clean the rust off that so that I don’t randomly lose hot water or die from a gas leak, or are those pipes beyond saving? In case you’re wondering why I bother to try and take care of this poo poo, quote:so that I don’t randomly lose hot water or die from a gas leak H110Hawk posted:Plus, they rent. Assuming they aren't paying for the gas into that thing who cares? Of course I pay for gas, are you nuts? No self-respecting capitalist would pass up the opportunity to make their lessees pay for utilities themselves. 
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Nov 15, 2019 17:10
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Pollyanna posted:Is it worth trying to clean the rust off that so that I don’t randomly lose hot water or die from a gas leak, or are those pipes beyond saving? They're probably fine, but I wouldn't leave them like that in my house...probably why I'd be a bad slumlord.
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Nov 15, 2019 17:24
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Those pipes are fine. The green corrosion is from whatever handyman they hired not wiping off the flux and eventually it will cause problems but you're probably fine for years based on what I can see. The sharkbites are definitely less than ideal but despite my hatred of them there aren't a lot of failure stories I can find on them. If you want to be thorough, that T fitting on the gas pipe should have a ~4" sediment trap on it instead of the plug on the bottom but that's not a safety concern. SpartanIvy fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Nov 15, 2019 |
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Nov 15, 2019 17:24
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Fun fact: some heating system need fuel and stop working if you run out. I almost got a week out of the oil the previous owner left me.
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Nov 16, 2019 14:59
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Mr. Powers posted:Fun fact: some heating system need fuel and stop working if you run out. I almost got a week out of the oil the previous owner left me. I just had a friend call out the oil company because he was away and his wife wasn't getting heat/she hit the reset and it only ran for 20 seconds. His oil supplier forgot to mark that his boiler runs all summer for hot water so their automatic delivery schedule was wrong and they ran out of oil.
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Nov 16, 2019 17:37
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Mr. Powers posted:Fun fact: some heating system need fuel and stop working if you run out. I almost got a week out of the oil the previous owner left me. It happened to me when I moved in as well. In fairness to me, the gauge on the oil tank was stuck, so it looked like I had >50% remaining. When I took out the tank's bung plug, she was dry as a beer keg at 2AM at a frat party. If you don't know how, now's the time to learn how to purge the oil line of air to get the furnace restarted safely. If it ran dry, you should probably also change the filter at the tank which is now probably covered in the sludge that is typically at the bottom of the tank.
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Nov 16, 2019 18:12
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B-Nasty posted:If you don't know how, now's the time to learn how to purge the oil line of air to get the furnace restarted safely. If it ran dry, you should probably also change the filter at the tank which is now probably covered in the sludge that is typically at the bottom of the tank. Good points. If it's a 2 line system you can just hit the reset button (might take a few rounds) and it will prime on its own. But I'd suggest not changing the filter until a day or so after the tank gets filled again - an empty/near empty tank getting filled stirs up a lot of crap that gonna end up in your new filter.
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Nov 16, 2019 18:29
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I'm just posting to say the good news is that I'm now full on oil and the bad news is that I was never out.B-Nasty posted:It happened to me when I moved in as well. In fairness to me, the gauge on the oil tank was stuck, so it looked like I had >50% remaining. When I took out the tank's bung plug, she was dry as a beer keg at 2AM at a frat party. The oil company does this for free if an autodeliver customer runs out. Since the tank wasn't empty, no filter replacement needed, and also no air in the line to see how to bleed. I mean, I saw the bleeding process and that's pretty straight forward, but I have no idea if there are extra steps if you actually get air in the lines. E: the cad cell was toast or the combustion chamber was filthy or both. This was allegedly serviced in August, but this tech said it was put back together wrong. Running good now with a recommendation for a proper cleaning when not paying weekend rates. carticket fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Nov 16, 2019 |
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Nov 16, 2019 18:57
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Mr. Powers posted:I mean, I saw the bleeding process and that's pretty straight forward, but I have no idea if there are extra steps if you actually get air in the lines. For a single line system, nope. If you saw it that's it. Crack the bleeder, make sure it's going somewhere other than you floor (I have a short piece of hose and coffee can + lid) hit the reset button and close the bleeder once you have a solid stream with no bubble coming out. It should stay lit then. If it doesn't give it another shot just like that and you should be good to go.
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Nov 16, 2019 19:54
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So about three weeks in to our new AC system, and the only "negative" so far is that I noticed some long, mostly-straight cracks both in our kitchen ceiling and our bedroom ceiling. We'd had a return added in the bedroom ceiling and the long cracks are pretty much close to each other, but opposite sides of the common wall between kitchen and our bedroom. A home inspector I know said he thinks it's probably due to the extra weight of the return and/or they stepped on sheetrock potentially while installing the return, but it has me nervous about whether I need to get my attic inspected... They replaced the furnace/coil pretty much in the same place as the original, although I'm guessing the new unit weighs a little more than the old had, and it looks like they set their all-thread mounts higher up the joists than my original's straps had been.
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Nov 19, 2019 05:04
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Might they have notched the joists to put that return in? People do some incredibly dumb poo poo like that sometimes and end up compromising the structure.
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Nov 19, 2019 11:40
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kastein posted:Might they have notched the joists to put that return in? People do some incredibly dumb poo poo like that sometimes and end up compromising the structure. Insert that one bathtub here.
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Nov 19, 2019 15:21
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDOI0cq6GZM This song, only VRF.
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Nov 19, 2019 22:51
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MRC48B posted:This song, only VRF. Are you personally having issues with residential VRF? I ask because my company has installed it commercially, but I've never seen it installed in a home. I keep thinking that when my unit craps out that I may switch to VRF, but I'm also scared of it being a giant pain in the rear end for me to deal with. The stuff I've installed commercially have mostly been trouble free after some initial troubleshooting. I would love to know if the energy savings are actually real though and not just applicable in test settings.
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Nov 21, 2019 14:44
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So the other day my boiler was a little low, I topped it off (I don't have an automatic filler) a small amount and it was all good. For a few days, the water level keeps going up, like to the top of sight glass. I drained it a couple times, but it's pretty clear that the feed valve is leaking and needs to be replaced. I turned off the boiler, let it cool and I ran the valve again at wide open for a couple seconds, to see if I could flush it out, maybe something was in the valve, but if that does work I'll have to get it switched out. Anyone know a good plumber/boiler guy in the Northern NJ area?
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Nov 23, 2019 22:08
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Bird in a Blender posted:Are you personally having issues with residential VRF? I ask because my company has installed it commercially, but I've never seen it installed in a home. I keep thinking that when my unit craps out that I may switch to VRF, but I'm also scared of it being a giant pain in the rear end for me to deal with. I work on the commercial side. I'm complaining because I have to deal with it whenever a VRF system doesn't live up to expectations. HVAC Engineers here in the flyovers are still getting the hang of this newfangled technology (that's worked fine in europe and asia for decades). Energy savings are always theoretical, because they operate under the assumption that the building occupant won't immediately start changing set points to suit them (they will), the weather will be in the assumed design parameters (it won't), and that the building was built to spec (it wasn't).
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Nov 23, 2019 22:30
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MRC48B posted:I work on the commercial side. I'm complaining because I have to deal with it whenever a VRF system doesn't live up to expectations. HVAC Engineers here in the flyovers are still getting the hang of this newfangled technology (that's worked fine in europe and asia for decades). Yea I battle that on the commercial side too. Did a school recently and the teachers will not quit messing with the thermostats so the system never works properly.
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Nov 24, 2019 16:15
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Have you guys not heard of dummy thermostats? There's plenty of purpose-built dummy thermostats (including for pneumatically controlled units), or you can just get a battery powered one and not actually wire it to anything (or wire it to a section of 4 wire cable that just disappears into the wall, ending somewhere in there, in case someone pulls the cover off to see if it's actually hooked up). Set it up to always show the set point instead of actual temp. Though the admin side of the grocery store I work in is always warm... they put halogen desk lamps aimed at the temp sensors (temp is controlled by corporate, but the offices wind up being 80+ in the summer because the RTU that wing is on also handles the pharmacy and drug/GM side of the store) in a few different offices to get them cooled off. Gets it down to a balmy ~65 in that wing since every office is doing it (there's no return air ducting in the office wing, and the door to that wing is always closed...  ). Pharmacy doesn't really notice since their RTU is shared with a part of the store with a 3 story high ceiling, most of their airflow just escapes to the sales floor. There's also a dead RTU for the next section of store (the fan works, that's it.. no heating or cooling), so the air movement is probably mixing the air a bit with the warmer air from the rest of the store.
randomidiot fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Nov 24, 2019 |
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Nov 24, 2019 18:21
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