Tarm Direct Design

[Birdman]

Inching closer to teh install day for the Tarm 40. Currently it is sitting in my basement and awaiting the plumber who is a trustworthy guy from the area. I believe he will be intalling it from the plan that Tarm gave me..." Tarm piping layout concept diagram" and " Two Boiler Installation with Circulators direct design" . I have an oil boiler that is currently hooked up. I have 3 zones ( using taco 007 ). One zone for 2 bedrooms, one zone is for master bedroom and one zone is for hot water heater. we will be adding another zone for the large living area and installing baseboard there as well. I am not a plumber or engineer type.... however as the homeowner... I want to know as much as I can. I have read for tons of hours on the hearth site. TONS. I get about 80 percent ... give or take. My question.... Is this the best design to use? I read the sticky on primary - secondary. I didn't get it all.. but should i print it out and give it to my plumber? he is not the type of person to get online... doesn't do internet. I am worried that after all is said and done... and the install is complete.. that i am goingto be kicking myself because the design was wrong. So many really smart people on here who have the intelligence to do this stuff(trevor, no fossil, jim, joe ). Am I getting the pre-install jitters?

 

[Nofossil]

Inching closer to teh install day for the Tarm 40. Currently it is sitting in my basement and awaiting the plumber who is a trustworthy guy from the area. I believe he will be intalling it from the plan that Tarm gave me..." Tarm piping layout concept diagram" and " Two Boiler Installation with Circulators direct design" . I have an oil boiler that is currently hooked up. I have 3 zones ( using taco 007 ). One zone for 2 bedrooms, one zone is for master bedroom and one zone is for hot water heater. we will be adding another zone for the large living area and installing baseboard there as well. I am not a plumber or engineer type.... however as the homeowner... I want to know as much as I can. I have read for tons of hours on the hearth site. TONS. I get about 80 percent ... give or take. My question.... Is this the best design to use? I read the sticky on primary - secondary. I didn't get it all.. but should i print it out and give it to my plumber? he is not the type of person to get online... doesn't do internet. I am worried that after all is said and done... and the install is complete.. that i am goingto be kicking myself because the design was wrong. So many really smart people on here who have the intelligence to do this stuff(trevor, no fossil, jim, joe ). Am I getting the pre-install jitters?

Pre-install jitters are not entirely inappropriate ;-)

Seems that very few plumbing and/or HVAC people have any knowledge or experience with these installations. Here's a schematic that might be of help. If you don't have storage, just replace the storage tank with a pipe.

Disclaimer: I've just started working on this schematic, and I'm not 100% sure I have it all worked out. Schematic comments:

1) All circulators require check valves, either integral or in-line.
2) The boiler circs should be higher flow than the zone circs. The Grundfos circs have three speeds which would allow some tuning.
3) You'll need some control mechanism to disable the oil boiler if the wood boiler (or storage) is hot. My 'simplest pressurized storage' sticky describes an approach.

 

[Birdman]

I will not have storage this winter... but plan to get it this summer. Does your diagram work for this? Also... how far away is ok to have the storage? I was planning on buying it from tarm... but maybe this summer I will see check first with my neighbor who is into things like this and we can find a tank or two and he can do the welding stuff. Maybe with help from people here on Hearth we can do it? We'll see. I will print your design and talk it over with my plumber... a million thanks!

 

[Birdman]

Also.. please tell me how my hot water heater will be effected by this design... I think i read on another post that there are some tricky things with this? Like pumps staying on .. or keeping something else hot to keep the domestic water hot? something about.. keeping 500 pounds of metal hot in order to have hot water? I will look fo the post..

 

[deerefanatic]

Hmm. I'm thinking that if your oil boiler is doing the job right now, then just piping the tarm into it is the way to go as you're not messing with a working system......

But I may be wrong here..... I only have my woodboiler so I have no experience tying into other equipment.

I used primary secondary on my system because I have a lot of zones that can utilize different water temps, so a primary secondary allows me to "reuse" water in zones that don't need it quite so hot after the "hot" zones have utilized it.........

-Matt

 

[Nofossil]

I will not have storage this winter... but plan to get it this summer. Does your diagram work for this? Also... how far away is ok to have the storage? I was planning on buying it from tarm... but maybe this summer I will see check first with my neighbor who is into things like this and we can find a tank or two and he can do the welding stuff. Maybe with help from people here on Hearth we can do it? We'll see. I will print your design and talk it over with my plumber... a million thanks!

I've talked to a few people who've had good luck getting propane tanks pretty cheap. In fact, I think they're not terribly expensive even new, at least compared to Tarm or STSS solutions.

You can install without storage and add it later. Closer to the heat loads is preferable for storage. 250 gallon propane tanks are 30" in diameter - will fit through a standard rough opening, though not through a standard doorway :-(

If you're going over this with your plumber, make sure he understands that there are several modes of operation as described in my 'simplest pressurized storage' sticky. Go over pump operation and flow paths for each mode and be sure that it makes sense.

As I said before, I haven't worked through this one as carefully as I'd like. I think it's OK, but I'd like other folks to weigh in on it.

 

[Birdman]

This is probably a dumb question and I mean no offense. Just trying to play devils advocate. How does it differ from the tarm " Direct design"? Why is your design better?

 

[Birdman]

Also... in your diagram... it has no automag overheat loop? is this because there is storage in your diagram? If i don't have storage then i would need to be sure this is done? Do you not need the power out overheat automag when you have storage?

 

[Nofossil]

I have no idea what Tarm's 'direct' schematic looks like - maybe it's exactly the same. Most designs are going to have at least some similarity. My personal goal is to identify the most simple / robust / efficient approaches and share them with the community. If Tarm has a better approach, I'm all for it.

I personally use a backup power supply for the controller, circulator, and zone valves rather than a dump zone. None of my schematics are intended as any more than a starting point. Specific applications will have a whole host of issues and constraints, so no design is likely to work without at least some adaptation.

 

[oilbegone]

Attached is a jpg of the information Tarm sent me that I am using. I will be using it with Tarm 30, 620 gallons of storage and a Toyotomi oil miser 180 as backup. Sorry I had to put it in two files my scanner was not large enough to get it all in one.

 

[NHFarmer]

I am just finishing my install using the Tarm diagram.So far it seems to be a very workable system.

 

[Birdman]

Keep me updated NHFarmer. I suppose your area is about the same weather as mine. I am in Central NH. But as we know in NH... every area can have its own weather pattern. My install should be beginning in a few weeks... if not sooner. Have you fired it yet?

 

[NHFarmer]

I had my first fire a couple of weeks ago.Have had a couple of hicups but really no big deal.still in the learning stage.I have been heating my DHW since I had my first fire.

 

[Birdman]

Do you have storage?

 

[NHFarmer]

Do you have storage?

Yes, I built a 1000 gal tank with homemade hx 320' 1/2 copper+20' of 1"copper.seems to be working so far