Shut off power to your circulating pump?

[Quattro Pete]

I found this:
http://www.managemyhome.com/mmh/maintena...xml&month=April

Do you guys follow this advice? Being a new home owner, I never had to deal with it before. And even now, I am not sure if my water heater has such a circulating pump...

Why would you want to shut this pump off for the summer? Doesn't the boiler still need to cool the heat exchanger during summer?

The heater I have is this one:
http://www.bradfordwhite.com/images/shared/pdfs/specsheets/251-B.pdf

The owner's manual doesn't say anything about a recirculating pump. It runs on natural gas, but is plugged into the power outlet - I think the blower fan uses it.

 

[eljefino]

I think you are looking at the domestic hot water section of a forced hot water style whole house heater in the first article.

 

[Quattro Pete]

I don't think I follow. Isn't that what I have?

 

[Gary Allan]

I don't even see the summer/winter hook up (for domestic hot water) in the first document.

Many residential boilers use one heat exchanger, and merely circulate that to a holding tank for hot water. They may also, depending on the mass involved, and the likely sensible demand, run just a coil inside the water jacket of the boiler.

Your unit appears to be a free standing, directly fired, gas hot water heater.

There's nothing to do to it ...except maybe shut off the gas supply if you're going on vacation.

 

[brianl703]

The first document talks about a boiler and the ones that I've looked at only run the circulating pump on a call for heat.

 

[eljefino]

Turn on your heat then go downstairs and see what's making noise. My folks had gas hot air heat and a separate water heater they leased from the gas co.

Generally the "whole house" systems have a small, always warm "box" with several coils in it, when that box gets cold the fire kicks in. Turn up the thermostat, the circ pump runs, then ~30 sec later the fire kicks on. Run some water, the fire kicks on.

 

[Gary Allan]

Yeah. I can't figure a circulation pump coming on without a remote signal from a thermostat.

I guess if you shut the boiler down with the 'circ pump enabled/powered, and the thermostat dipped below setpoint, that it would run the pump. The whole arrangement should have one single disconnect.

 

[Cup of Joe]

A natural gas fueled water heater is not a boiler so it does not apply.

The bradfordwhite unit in the link has a blower motor for exhaust fumes and the igniter and thermostat would all be energized. boiler or water heater

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: TaterandNoodles
boiler or water heater

Got it now. Thanks for that link.

 

[brianl703]

Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
Yeah. I can't figure a circulation pump coming on without a remote signal from a thermostat.


All I can figure is that might happen if the circulation pump relay were to go bad and someone just wired the pump to run all the time. The one I saw, the relay was part of the control and not separately replaceable...so the best fix was to add a separate relay to control the circulation pump. The original relay was wired in parallel with the gas valve. So the replacement relay was wired the same.