Aristo! Aristo! A la lanterne!: A mechanics brain never rests ....

Thursday, January 30, 2025

A mechanics brain never rests ....

We have an oil-fired boiler for baseboard heat, and a good woodstove. During the recent cold snap (single digits) we found the furnace was not working 100%. The upstairs zone seemed okay, and the system would hold it at 65-70 all night with no issue. Downstairs, not so much. When the woodstove went out at night, we'd come downstairs to 55-60 degrees, no matter what the thermostat was set at.

I noticed the burner was short cycling. No more than 5 minutes on, then at least 10 minutes off. Service was called, and the old guy did his usual stuff but freely admitted he didn't see any problems. The furnace system was not fixed, but it operated well enough in conjunction with the woodstove that we stayed quite comfortable.

In fact, relying on the woodstove and burning as little oil as possible is our goal ($3.29 per gallon!).

Still...... it just nagged at my mind that the house heat was not 100% right. So, my brain did it's thing. I thought about it.

Short cycling implies the boiler is getting hot and the limit switch is shutting it down. Anything else would trip the reset on the burner. Okay.

So, it's making the heat and it goes upstairs just fine but not downstairs. It's a zone issue with circulation. It's not circulating on the first floor, so the furnace overheats and cycles off. It's a zone-circulation issue. Has to be.

I went down and stared at the furnace plumbing for a few minutes. Only one circulation pump for the house, and that MUST be okay since the upstairs zone is fine. Stare some more. Hmm... after the plumbing branches to the zones, there is an electrical widget in each pipe. Hmm.... that MUST be some sort of electrical valve since that's the only zone control there is. HMM... are those manual trip levers on the zone isolation valves? Cool! Lets poke them!

The zone isolator valve for the first floor was really stiff, while the other one worked smoothly and easily. Manually operating the first floor valve a few dozen times, and now it works freely.

We have house heat working at 100% now.

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Robert Heinlein

"Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.

But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. It is easier to deal with a footpad than it is with the leech who wants "just a few minutes of your time, please — this won't take long." Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your time — and squawk for more!
So learn to say No — and to be rude about it when necessary.
Otherwise you will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work, and certainly no time for love and happiness. The termites will nibble away your life and leave none of it for you.

(This rule does not mean that you must not do a favor for a friend, or even a stranger. But let the choice be yours. Don't do it because it is "expected" of you.)"