In most cases, the majority of people think about the reliability and efficiency of the heating system after a certain failure has occurred in it. It is extremely important that no significant mistakes are made at all stages of the design, selection and installation of such a system. To avoid serious heating errors, the installation of a heating system in a house must be approached with the utmost responsibility.
Choosing a boiler of unsuitable power
Heating errors associated with the choice of boiler for the heating system are the most costly for homeowners. When choosing a boiler, it is not enough to focus only on the area of the room. Installing a boiler whose power level exceeds the required parameters will lead to additional costs for heating equipment. But choosing a boiler with insufficient power will lead to even worse consequences. In this case, the heating system simply will not be able to fully cope with heating the living space.
Often developers do not take into account the efficiency of the boiler when purchasing it and look only at the power. But these things are absolutely interconnected and you also need to pay attention to efficiency.
Values
What is the pressure difference between different sections of the heating system?
- Between the supply and return lines of the heating main it is approximately 20 - 30 meters, or 2 - 3 kgf/cm2.
Reference: excess pressure of one atmosphere raises the water column to a height of 10 meters.
- The difference between the mixture after the elevator and the return pipeline is only 2 meters, or 0.2 kgf/cm2.
- The difference on the retaining washer between the circulation taps of the elevator unit rarely exceeds 1 meter.
- The pressure created by a circulation pump with a wet rotor usually varies from 2 to 6 meters (0.2 - 0.6 kgf/cm2).
This pump creates a pressure of 3, 5 and 6 meters depending on the selected mode.
Wrong choice of pipes
If pipes of different diameters are used in the heating system, this will inevitably lead to heating errors due to the pressure difference at the junction, leading, in turn, to an increase in hydraulic losses. In addition, when choosing polymer heating pipes, you should always clarify whether a reinforcing layer is present in the design. If it is absent, the line will not have sufficient rigidity when exposed to hot water.
Leaking heating pipe
Corrosion most often occurs at the junction of the pipeline with the radiator
The cause of interruptions in the heating network is often a leak caused by corrosion or poor-quality pipe connections. If the location of the leak is visible, then the heating problem in the apartment can be solved faster. It is bad if the connection is hidden in the thickness of the wall or in the floor. Then you will have to cut off the entire leaking pipeline branch and install a new one.
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How to seal a leak if necessary? To do this, it is recommended to keep in stock simple plumbing devices for clamping pipes of the appropriate diameter. As a last resort, you can make a homemade clamp: wrap a piece of soft rubber around the leak, and then tighten it tightly with wire.
If a leak is found at the junction of the radiator sections, you will have to bandage this area with a strip of fabric, which has previously been soaked with moisture-resistant glue. It is permissible to use a special sealant, “cold welding” and other means.
The proposed methods of dealing with the problem of heating system leakage are only temporary, and subsequently a major repair will be required.
In advance, before the start of the heating season, inspect all pipelines and radiators in the apartment to see if there are any leaks. Owners of an autonomous heating system should test its performance in the fall.
Finally, we can advise: if you have any problems with heating in an apartment or in your private home, contact a specialist. Only they know how to correctly design a system, install a boiler, install pipes and connect radiators.
Do not skimp on the quality of the purchased equipment, so as not to spend money on repeated repairs if the faucet you bought on the cheap suddenly breaks and floods the room.
Learn to correctly identify the causes of heating problems and begin to eliminate them competently. In other words: think twice, fix once!
Incorrect selection of heating scheme
Choosing a suitable heating scheme is a very important point when installing a heating system. There are a huge number of such schemes, but there is no universal option. For each project, the heating scheme must be selected individually, taking into account all the existing features and nuances. Nowadays, professional designers or plumbers can draw such a diagram. A huge number of heating diagrams are also available on the Internet, but in most cases they provide only general recommendations and often contain significant errors. So that later you do not have to completely redo heating errors, ultimately spending significantly more money than was originally envisaged. It is more advisable to either seek help from experienced designers or draw up a diagram of the heating system yourself.
Connecting radiators to the hot water supply system
Let's start with the fact that there are two different systems: a hot water supply system, from which water is supplied to the taps, and a heating system, from which water is supplied to the radiators.
At first glance, it seems that everything is simple: in order for the batteries to heat, you need hot water. So why not connect them to the water supply? In addition, in theory, this can extend the heating season, which ends in the spring, and hot water is available almost all year round. But no, you can’t do that.
The thing is that the water supply system operates in an open cycle. This means that the water in the radiators will be constantly renewed, and each time the device will interact with new impurities and reagents that it may contain.
Remember what can come out of the tap after a long water outage? Brown slurry, which can hardly even be called water and contains everything.
It is these impurities that will gradually destroy the walls of the battery, which will quickly lead to corrosion and leaks.
The heating system is designed differently: water circulates in it in a closed cycle, so the amount of aggressive impurities that could get into the coolant does not increase. This means the risk of leakage is much lower.
Selecting a radiator in the store, 1 section per 1 m2
Another common heating error. The power of the radiator purchased must strictly correspond to the volume of the area of the heated room. Experienced specialists recommend calculating the required number of sections for each room, and not for the entire apartment in total. Otherwise, there may be a need to add additional sections or install another radiator.
Wrong choice of circulation pump
Beginners in this business are recommended to use special programs for selecting a circulation pump and for performing hydraulic calculations. Such programs will help calculate all the resistance created by all devices and pipes, clearly showing how much the pressure created by a particular pump will drop due to this resistance. If the selected pump exceeds this resistance, the system will circulate correctly. If the pressure created by the pump is less than the resistance, the heating system will not work. That is, you will make a gross heating mistake. Also, when purchasing such a pump, it is imperative to take into account external factors related to its size, maintenance features and the level of noise produced during operation.
Repair of boilers for home heating systems
Scheme of water heating of a private house.
Repairing heating boilers with your own hands requires special knowledge, experience and skills. In addition, it will not be possible to do without specialized tools and equipment. The need for such events can be caused by various reasons. So, in some cases we are talking about minor breakdowns or simple preventive maintenance, in others, the repair of home heating boilers is associated with eliminating the consequences of various accidents.
A lot in this case depends on the homeowner. If he does not neglect preventive measures and carries out regular inspection and maintenance of the equipment, both with his own hands and with the involvement of qualified specialists, then serious repairs are unlikely to be required. It's another matter if the system works without proper attention and care. Over time, such disregard of its interests on the part of the owner will result in the appearance of many problems, so it is imperative to show due care and attention to the heating system of your home. In this case, you will almost certainly be able to limit yourself to minor preventive repairs that you can do yourself.
Heating system maintenance includes:
Scheme of operation of a steam heating system.
- correct boiler settings;
- preparing equipment for the heating season;
- checking sensors;
- checking the operation of equipment automation;
- identifying the causes of boiler failure.
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Of course, if, for one reason or another, you need to carry out more serious repairs of heating boilers, you will have to involve specialists with qualifications and experience, because by doing the repairs yourself without the proper knowledge, you can make everything even worse.
It is very important to understand that there is a huge variety of different equipment on the modern market. Consequently, when it comes to repairing heating boilers with the replacement of parts and components, additional difficulties may arise in finding them. That is why experts advise performing all preventive work in a timely manner. Then it will be possible to order the necessary components in advance, without waiting until they completely break down.
Wrong choice of expansion tank
An expansion tank is a special container with which you can compensate for the thermal expansion of the liquid circulating in the heating system. This is very important equipment, the selection of which must be taken as seriously as possible. This device must be selected in strict accordance with the parameters of the heating system. Otherwise, full operation of the system will be impossible. When choosing an expansion tank, you need to focus on the type of heating system - it can be open or closed. In addition, it should be taken into account that the volume of the expansion tank should be about 15% of the coolant in the system. It is better to choose a model that is slightly larger in volume relative to the calculated value, since a large tank will not be able to fundamentally affect the functionality of the heating system, unlike a smaller tank. And then there will be no heating errors.
Creating a drop
How is pressure difference created?
Elevator
The main element of the heating system of an apartment building is the elevator unit. Its heart is the elevator itself - a nondescript cast-iron tube with three flanges and a nozzle inside. Before explaining the principle of operation of the elevator, it is worth mentioning one of the problems of central heating.
There is such a thing as a temperature graph - a table of the dependence of the temperatures of the supply and return routes on weather conditions. Let's give a short excerpt from it.
| Outside air temperature, C | Feed, C | Return, C |
| +5 | 65 | 42,55 |
| 66,39 | 40,99 | |
| -5 | 65,6 | 51,6 |
| -10 | 76,62 | 48,57 |
| -15 | 96,55 | 52,11 |
| -20 | 106,31 | 55,52 |
Deviations from the schedule up and down are equally undesirable. In the first case, it will be cold in the apartments, in the second, energy costs at the thermal power plant or boiler house will increase sharply.
A window open in cold weather means increased costs for energy workers.
At the same time, as is easy to see, the spread between the supply and return pipelines is quite large. With circulation slow enough for such a temperature delta, the temperature of the heating devices will be unevenly distributed. Residents of apartments whose radiators are connected to the supply risers will suffer from the heat, and owners of return radiators will freeze.
The elevator provides partial recirculation of the coolant from the return pipeline. By injecting a fast stream of hot water through the nozzle, in full compliance with Bernoulli's law, it creates a fast flow with low static pressure, which draws additional mass of water through the suction.
The temperature of the mixture is noticeably lower than that of the supply and slightly higher than that of the return pipeline. The circulation speed is high, and the temperature difference between the batteries is minimal.
Elevator operation diagram.
Support washer
This simple device is a steel disk at least a millimeter thick with a hole drilled in it. It is placed on the flange of the elevator unit between the circulation taps. Washers are placed on both the supply and return pipelines.
Important: for normal operation of the elevator unit, the diameter of the holes in the retaining washers must be larger than the diameter of the nozzle. Usually the difference is 1-2 millimeters.
Circulation pump
In autonomous heating systems, the pressure is created by one or more (according to the number of independent circuits) circulation pumps. The most common devices - with a wet rotor - are a design with a common shaft for the impeller and the rotor of the electric motor. The coolant performs the functions of cooling and lubricating the bearings.
Circulation pump with wet rotor.
A thermal head is not always needed
Recently, thermal heads for heating radiators have become widespread, used when it is necessary to automatically control the temperature inside the room. But they cannot be used in all cases. Especially if a solid fuel boiler is used to heat the room. When such a boiler heats the room to the required level and all the thermal valves on all the radiators in the room are closed, it begins to boil, because there will be nowhere for the coolant to move. And this is not just a heating error, this is already a reason for an emergency. To prevent this from happening, it is necessary to leave at least the minimum possible number of radiators without the possibility of automatic shutdown
Mistake No. 5. Some people have the boiler, others have the service.
Another story. One man bought a boiler at a large hardware store. Since stores (especially large chain stores) almost never service the equipment sold, the sellers referred the buyer to a service center. There, an agreement was concluded with a citizen for boiler maintenance.
But the man did not rejoice in the warmth of his home for long. A couple of months later the boiler broke down safely. At the service center, since the warranty had not expired, they said: “OK, we’ll fix it. No problem. Just wait three weeks until the spare parts arrive, until we do the work.”
And what should a person do for almost a month? Warm up with the breath of your own body? Or maybe make the whole house use heaters? No electrical network can handle this. But I had to wait and suffer. At the same time, understand a simple truth: servicing should be carried out by the person who sold the equipment. Then there is more responsibility and quality.
But let's return to large stores. The secret of their work is simple: in order to expand the circle of customers as much as possible, they sell many brands of boilers from different brands and manufacturers. Servicing is provided to service centers. And they are always stuck: there are many different boilers, there are also clients, but there are not enough of their own employees. There are few spare parts. So you have to answer: “Come to us this way.” month".
How to avoid mistakes. Purchase boilers only from specialized companies that select, install and service the purchased equipment. This is convenient for clients because they have someone to ask questions about. Also, when concluding a contract, look at the item “Boiler during repairs”. At the same time, you can always count on the fact that they will provide you with a boiler while yours is being repaired.
