I like how the plumber decided that the valves must be as close to the wall as possible, so that you need a special screwdriver to open them, instead of anywhere the the 3-4 foot of space between the valves and the boiler
It might have been two separate crews doing the work like the plumber who ran the pex around the house and then the HVAC boys installed the heater and valves and stuff and things.
@@Godspamit Could have also been a loose or oxidized connection that was open cicuit at 30V,but became shorted at 120V and the connection welded from the high current.
As someone who has worked on everything from dehumidifiers to industrial boilers and refrigeration, I can say he missed his calling. Fantastic job again by Electroboom.
@@inurokuwarz i remember a trick to fix those christmas lights if one bulb is burnt out and you don't wanna try to track it down: hook it up to a taser or other high-voltage source and zap it. this burns and welds the broken filament or something in the broken bulb, so the circuit is closed again. of course, this is very hacky
"Higher voltage is potentially more dangerous" this is the highly scientific and educational content that I've watched years of electroboom for. I wish they taught wisdom like this in schools.
Or it could be one of the safety features when you ask for a low flow rate (valves almost closed). I think these type of units need at least some flow, else they could get dangerous
HVAC tech working on EE degree here, love the videos. This one brought me back to early days of my apprenticeship where I had to figure out the same issues. Having the nest controller makes things so much nicer
@@kerimgueney Since you haven't gotten a reply, here's the way I got into HVAC which is one of many possible paths. I was an electrical apprentice for a while, then got a job with an HVAC controls company installing control equipment. I've known plumbers that got into HVAC the same way. From there, experience and interest can move you into the refrigeration side or the controls side. I went the controls route, but it would have been just as easy to go in any direction, and most trades companies will cooperate with schools to complete your training at the same time. Basically start at the bottom and work your way up, following your interests.
Whenever I see a big boiler, I always wonder how compact you could get it without taking away functionality. Then I realise that keeping it big and spread out is pretty key to keeping it easily repairable.
A word from the wise (and experienced). Honeywell zone valves are quite troublesome. I've had the gear on the motor strip out because it's made of soft material, the motors themselves get weak and wont go far enough to set the end switch. I use caleffi now and haven't had any more issues or callbacks. The actuator units have a lever that releases them from the body without opening the system. Honeywell has two small screws deep inside that make it tougher to change. Caleffi has a higher cv( flow ) rate
Honeywell & M.K. electrical goods have become fairly unreliable over the last few yrs, but the M.K. prices have remained rather high. ( M.K. & Honeywell are the same same company)
Sure thing buddy I could say the same about caleffi, it does have a higher flow rate, but the inverse flow of ac to dc conversion with lower string coils per cubic metre has led to a lot of companies opting for honeywell systems. Not to mention the 8 year old who got electrocuted at 45 meters distance from a caleffi motor last spring which caused a black out in arkansas?
As a mechanical designer, I have to admit: Electrical engineering is often basically some kind of sorcery to me. I mean... I get how a lightbulb works... but that's basically it.
I had the pleasure of being taught physics by a FermiLab scientist. She was smart enough, and I mean no disrespect she was very smart, to know when I needed conceptual vs practical answers to questions I had about capacitors, inductors, etc. Different people need different approaches to electrical engineering.
The only time I've taken one apart instead of just replacing the head was when I was a trainee and was instructed to "change the head on that valve". Still remember my bosses confusion 15 years later as to why was the old one in pieces in the box when at first he thought I was wasting time on pissing about. Difference between theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge.
I have the same kind of setup in my house except it's from the 80s and with only two zones, I had to replace the transformer and I pretty much ditched all the old electronics to make my own, now each zone is on a relay controlled by Home Assistant and I made my own thermostats powered by an ESP32. All the issues I had before were electrical too!
@The Game Shorts 🅥 you've posted this link on every video I've seen last week. It's an ice cream recipe... You're spamming comment sections for an ice cream recipe..
Isn't it fun when something like this breaks down? You get all the fun of debugging an issue with an at this point pretty complicated device, all while dealing with the frustration of your heating or whatever other important thing not working...
I have been installing complexed hydronic systems for 40 years. I would never let an electrician much less an electrical engineer wire any of my systems. lol
As a Mechanical Engineer, I'm tempted to ask "a friend" that I know to turn Medhi into a frog! ;) LOL! Of course I wouldn't really do that, but if my friend _did_ turn him into a frog, then he could redo some of Galvani's experiments with electricity & frogs. Seriously though, his troubleshooting was interesting and the repairs appear to have worked, at least until the too-high voltage kills more motors. I half expected him to replace the power supply with a regulated 24VAC PSU.
@@anthonyspadafora1384 What, because we'd be able to point out all the things you've been doing wrong for those last 40 years? :P ;) Sorry couldn't help myself
Fail safe valves, what a concept! This design always uses the full travel of the valve and is very reliable on the 'wet' side. The proportional valves tend to be much less reliable, especially if the control system does not have routines that use the full travel regularly. As a former electronics engineer, who used (amoungst other things) to maintain the control system in a glasshouse comples with over 120 indiviual climate controlled compartments, I know a fair amount about these valves and their failure modes. Most of my callouts were to find that the control system was fine, but there was a mechanical problem, or that the control gear (the electricians responsibilty) was at fault. One proportional valve design that I liked, but was let down by a poor control board design, used a solenoid to pull the valve open, with the coil being phase angle controlled. The response was very non linear, but we had flow and return temperature sensors, so the non linearity would be taken out by the PID loop.
Was hopping down to look for exactly this comment, simpler mechanical design by leaving the motors live and if the system ever failed electrically the valves should close. Makes me wonder if there is an elegant way to reduce/eliminate the power use without losing the failsafe.
@@Loran425 Oh, there is a way: pneumatic actuators with spring return to closed. The obvious problem is the need for compressed air to operate the actuators.
@@Loran425 a small latch on the spring actuated by a small electrical current? Basically, add something that can be controlled with the smallest possible electrical circuit to reduce the power needed. Or, some failsafe that is sensitive to a state change in the electrical system. I don't know enough to imagine what that would be, probably some digital doohickey.
@@Loran425 My old dishwasher door actuator uses a wax motor so you get it hot and it opens by thermal expansion. Without power the wax cools and contracts. It's not critical these valves open lightning fast so why not. All they are is a heater, wax that expands under heat, and a spring. On the plus side the valves would close suuuuper slow so as to never slam shut.
Even with the voltage dropping when all motors are running, these motors would also work fine at 22VAC you could still drop the voltage from 31V to 27V, then a single motor would at least only get ~25-26V instead of 29-30
Makes me wonder if they're using an older transformer made for 110 v hence why the higher output on 120 v... or maybe the plumbers that did this are dumb and got the wrong transformer?
Hi Medi, I’m a commercial engineer and I do a lot of pipework design - Re the pipework: The installer has tried to create a basic low loss header but (for many reasons) the primary pipework appears to be undersized and the connections for flow and return are too close together. Also there should be a by-pass between the circulator and the zone valves. I could write an essay on the correct way to do it… but if it’s working, please don’t start re-plumbing it! 😂😂😂
It would be awesome to watch Mehdi fix the underlying issues that caused this problems. Run a dedicated 15 Amp line in the walls replace the transformer with a power regulator, or alternatively completely over engineer a system from the thermometers to the valves changing the signal to digital or at least DC
You can also probably get the motors rated for mains voltage and use the 28V to control a relay. Or just unwind a few turns from the transformer (or wind a few turns backward) so the voltage at full load is lower than 24V (use an autotransformer to find out the minimal voltage at which the valves still work and just use slightly higher voltage.
I worked on an old 5 zone system that had 5 circulating pumps. Expensive, but it has super redundancy. One of the zones had a high velocity pump. Then someone replaced it with a standard circulating pump. The zone for the bedrooms (which were at the far end of a sprawling house) was not keeping that end of the house warm in really cold weather.
yeah, and then when they move the new owners need an electrical engineer to fix everything that he over engineered because your average plumber/hvac guy isn't going to want to touch it.
as a student studying chemical engineering i was going to complain that it didn't make it into the hierarchy, but then i remembered that chemical engineering is just extreme plumbing. so we did make it into the list, above mechanical engineers. score
10:58 This system resets itself to a known state; all valves automatically close completely upon loss of power, it's not possible to end up half-open. Using D/C motors and limit switches in the "closed" position could do the same, but then you need more I/O pins on the controller ($$), more switches ($), a decent power supply instead of just a cheap transformer ($$), more code to handle the "closed" switches (which means more potential bugs & more programming $$$$$)... It's the cheapest system that gets the job done and mostly doesn't fail before the warranty expires. Looks like a good engineering job to me! :D
But the circulation pump would shut down in a power outage, who cares if the valve is open in a closed loop system? A simple check valve will stop any water reversing flow. These days (alleged chip shortage aside) micro-controllers are dirt cheap, most commercially available (heck, even hobbyist versions) have enough IO pins that can be multiplexed to work very cheaply. The coding cost is debatable as well, and entirely dependent on the number of units sold/installed. Here in Australia such water based heating systems are rare, so yeah, all components inc programming would be expensive, but I believe pretty common in the northern hemisphere so less of an issue. And your assumption of a decent power supply being more expensive than the potential "life of product" power drain of this cheap alternative could be argued. "mostly doesn't fail before the warranty expires" is cold comfort (pun intended) and a poor metric... good for the seller/manufacturer I guess, but this planned obsolescence is bad for the planet, as it needs yet more replacement parts to be made and consumed over the actual life of the entire installation.
imo you really don't need much I/O Pins, just rs-flip-flops, a shift register and a timer. Heck, you could even use an fpga for all that. Implement a proprietary or public open source serial protocol and all you'd need are like two I/O pins at minimum, better yet four as twisted pairs for RX and TX.
“Interesting how this plumbing problem turned out to be electrical” Sounds like whatever discipline of engineering that normally does HVAC did their job right, I wonder which types of engineers those are 🤔
Cryptographer you are, huh? 😉 Vulcan engineers? German? Japanese? Don't give me any Static, I am trying my best. How about any engineer that knows when to use a normally open circuit over closed, and vise versa?
Watching your near misses helps calm me while I do simple electrical tasks around the house. As long as I verify the circuit is dead and be mindful of the potential of injury I feel much more confident I won't burn the house down.
Dear Mehdi, thank you for making these videos. I've learned so much in electrical engineering from your videos, while having a laugh from your content. Your content unironically makes my job in engineering easier.
The "shorted" hot water pipe is a bypass. It mixes super hot water from furnace with cold water. This way your radiators are safe to touch. You can think about this like voltage divider. Ofter there is a valve working like potentiometer so you can dial up output temperature.
Normally there will be a thermostat in the boiler to regulate the output temperature. Pretty sure that loop is there to enable continuous flow even if all the heating circuit valves are closed.
It is a bypass, but not for the reason you mentioned. The closely spaced tees provide what we call ‘hydraulic separation’. By doing this, the water flow through the boiler remains constant, regardless of how many zones are turned on.
I doubt that its used to lower the temperature since its a gas boiler that can just turn on/off or modulate when necessary. Such a precaution is only required if you have a wood furnace or have a heater that heats up a seperate tank with the water inside. This would be one of the reasons why you would require a bypass here
I Love you mehdi! I designed particle accelerator electronics for 4 years, and me and my colleagues would watch your videos for inspiration. For example your Jakobs ladder was used as a 1000V power supply for a mock up injection kicker for ISIS Neutron and Muon Source in Rutherford. Keep up the good work, you might be helping more than you know.
@@g3th_ then let's say in civilized Europe. in Italy every replacement of the heating system must be done in this way with at least a condensing or biomass boiler! Each new construction must instead have at least one hybrid system with a water heat pump, solar panels and photovoltaic panels!
The "short-circuit" is the correct way to plumb that boiler. It is called primary-secondary pumping\piping. There are two circulator pumps. The primary pump circulates water through the boiler's heat exchanger. The secondary pump circulates the water through each of your zones for heating. This primary pump is actually located on the inside of your combi boiler. What I did notice is that the zone valves are not on the correct end of the zone piping. Zone valves should be installed on the return side of the piping so as to not to cause water hammer when the zones shut. Because the pump is creating head pressure and pumping into the zone valves, there will be a spike of pressure when the valves shut from the head pressure of the pump. This can result in a knocking noise whenever any of your zones shut. I would recommend moving the zone valves to the return side of the zones if possible. The voltage you are getting from the power supply should not really hurt those motors too much. Its pretty much a nominal voltage difference from what the motors are rated for. Most zone valve panels like the one you have output 27-26VAC to the valves. All the end switches on each zone valve are usually wired in parallel to the T-T (AKA thermostat) terminals on the boiler signaling the boiler to run. Each thermostat makes and breaks the 24V power going to each of the corresponding zone valve motors by disconnecting one leg coming from the secondary side of the transformer. If you continue to burn out that same motor I would recommend replacing the valve body and not just the motor. Usually what happens is mechanical resistance occurs at the valve stem over time from scale/buildup inside the valve. This scale/buildup will cause the motor to prematurely wear out over time. This advice is coming from a professional mechanical contractor/HVAC tech with 12yrs experience with hydronic/steam heating. Hope this helps you out.
Maybe they just want the valves to close by themselves when you have a power outage, kinda like a fire door that is normally held open by an electro magnet ?
2:00 This setup is a passive mixer; it reduces/balances temparature by joining the forerun and backrun of the loop at some point. Most of the time, there's also a reduction inside the plumbing where the two pipes join to reduce flow rate.
8:54 I had to laugh internally when I saw it smoking and Mehdi didn't notice ;) The angry (not scared at all) response to the smoke: "What are you burning?!?" (with a "Why do you allow yourself to burn?!?" between the lines)
Electrical engineers are basically plumbers... gotta make sure everything is flowing, no leaks, and if something breaks there's going to be a lot of damage to your house.
I work at a motor company. I've heard a bit of an urban legend that once, many years ago, there was a tiny strand of copper causing a short that stopped a motor from functioning. The fix? Shock the sh*t out it and burn out the short. Maybe that's what happened to you? Who knows
I start getting anxiety as soon as the cover comes off and the more dangerous parts start getting yanked around. I know it's intentional, but it still gets me
The bypass/short circuit path has a pressure relief valve in it. In case the water gets very hot and the syatem pressure increases, the bypass valve opens to inlet.
@@marco23p it doesn’t. The big thing with Honeywell on the side just vents air that gets trapped in the system the pressure relief to the right of that just dumps water down the drain, which isn’t great as you’ll never know when it’s hitting pressure
Loved this Mehdi, really happy with all of these home DIY repair videos that just extend the EE knowledge to other areas. Great stuff. Thanks for encouraging me to repair things and to understand complex systems.
Taco does make a system that has an input board that takes the old constant 24v signal when calling for heat and uses it to drive DC zone valves. They're almost standard in really big manifolds by now
I had this exact problem at my parents house a while back. The motors ran really really hot when they were on and a couple wouldn't work at all... Now I know why. Thanks for sharing your findings (also as an EE myself I died with the MechE joke...uh I mean fact)
I suppose the motor fight against the spring and button all the time to have a fail-safe setup. If the power is lost or a motor dies, all valves close.
Neither valve position is "safer" than that other tbh. It's is a legacy system that was designed for least possible complexity; voltage applied valve opens, voltage not applied valve shut. These would traditionally have been controlled by a simple bi-metallic strip style thermostat.
Normally the reason for these valves using springs and constant-on motors is that in the event of a power failure they'll all open, allowing free flow of water so you don't end up with weird pressure issues while the boiler isn't powered. It probably also helps distribute a bit of heat to the radiators through convection, so your house doesn't cool down quite as fast.
As a mechanical engineer who just graduated from my undergraduate studies……..I can confirm that Medhi’s rating system is correct😪😂 In all seriousness, I love what I do and will Stan MEs as the highest form of engineering as long as I live! 💪🏽😎
The "short circuit" Is what is called primary secondary piping. This piping arrangement decouples the flow rates from the boiler pump and the zone pump. You can override the zone valves with the little levers protruding from the side of the zone valves. Your zones have no flow valves and you do not have a variable speed pump to maintain pressure. In other words if all the zone valves are open the water will take the path of least resistance. add flow valves to each zone return...set the variable speed pump for 8 psi...open one zone at a time and adjust flow valve to obtain a 20 degree delta T. None of the trades you mentioned do this type of work properly. What you need is an HVAC hydronic tech. We are very few in the US but very plentiful in Europe.
As an HVAC guy with over 35 years experience, I can tell you why it is designed that way. In many control and actuators they have fail safe logic. In other words they fail or go back to a certain position or state if all power is lost. Let's say you have a damper actuator that powers open to bring in fresh ventilation air into a building or system. If the power fails in the winter you Don't have power to drive the actuator closed so the building freezes and damages the building. If you have a motor in opposition to spring tension and the power drops the spring tension will drive the actuator to it's fail safe position. Normally open or normally closed. I had to go investigate a large building that suffered over 800,000.00 of damage during a power outage in the winter. Someone who doesn't understand fail safe logic put in an actuator that was drive open drive closed on a 6 foot by 10 foot economizer fresh air damper for the building. They fired up an emergency generator set to get heat going in the building in one area. The building maintenance technician tried to share heat from one area to another by putting circulation fans in manual or bypass mode. This bypassed the inoperable building management system and he froze up the entire building because of a motor just like the one you are holding in your hand but much larger with 150 ft. Lbs. Of torque. Sometimes the few mili or micro watts of power are worth the trade off. 😉 Sometimes Electromechanical engineers are smarter than people realize.
This is my problem with engineers, even if the cheaper thing works the same, we have rules and codes that regulate what equipment you can use all over the world... Electricians and typical trade-workers understand this but engineers are just like "lulz, just using this" 😂
@Samuel that's half-right, half-wrong though. We still do have national norms and architecture laws which mandates certain technological processes in certain applications. For instance, you cannot use just any random pipe when doing heating installations - it does have to be certified for certain temperature, pressure and material hardness. Also, you cannot use tin-based soldering joints on piping with operation temperatures exceeding 150 degrees Celsius.
Mehdi: Electrical engineers are at the top of the hierarchy, plumbers are at the bottom Mehdi two seconds later: *Points to plumbing* “I don’t know what this magical device is” 💀
Medhi, the "magic device" (1:20) is a simple pump that makes water to flow. this type of pump is silent, the only method you can see if it is actually pumping water is to touch it and see if it vibrates (is a very low vibration). you can also increase the speed of the pump (but not on all models) with a rotating gear on the alimenting box (sorry if i do gramm. errors, i'm Italian and not fully understand english :D )
The switch in the valve is a "call for heat" signal to the boiler when the valve is open, so as long as the valve and it's corresponding thermostat/timer are both "calling for heat" then the boiler will fire up.
The reason they use that design is so in case of disaster / power outage the valves close. This helps in case power is out in freezing temperatures. If you purged the line it would be problematic if water is turned on but not power, and it freezes in the lines, or if you need to do any plumbing work and power is out, the lines stuck open.
I believe the reason they have to stay on when the valve is open and close with a spring is to keep the valve close in case of a power failure. So if you use them for something that can spill out (and maybe catch fire, like fuel) they fail a little safer.
In electrical speak, they want the water lines supervised. Aka if there's a problem, they want someone to notice and fix it. In this case, the system is telling you there's a problem with the valve by cutting off your heat till you fix it. Fire alarm systems work in a similar manner, except they get nice and loud speakers and flashing lights to tell you something is wrong and you need to GTFO (or just the control panel starts to scream to get a tech in to fix it)
So you are worried about 15 watts of power which all turns to heat when turning on a zone that probably goes back to a 5000watt tankless heater? The real problem is that the waste power doesn't just go to heat, it also goes into destroying the motors themselves. The reason they are designed this way is so that they don't need any power to turn off.
Just a thought, but how about putting a resistor in line with each motor to take off some of the stress. I did a quick calculation (which may be wrong) which said a 6-8 ohm resistor would drop the voltage the motor sees closer to 24V. Unfortunately the resistor would end up dissipating 3+ watts. You'd have to play around to find a value that still runs the motor despite any dips in the supply voltage.
I was thinking the same thing, but I was too lazy to determine a resistor value. A trick which I think is sometimes used is to have full voltage connected "normally" but when the motor triggers the end of travel switch put a larger resistor in series. Depending on the wiring this could be easy, otherwise it could be done with a relay. By using two power levels like this much greater efficiency can be achieved.
I was also thinking that but if all the valves are on it could drop to low and the motor wouldn't run. I don't understand why they make it so that all the motors can run at the same time at all... Just give it a little smarts and make them turn on 1 by 1. Make it a steady 24v... But at that point ur probably better off going the mentioned DC system anyways
@@eDoc2020 I like that idea. Have a second resistor which is normally shorted by a normally closed contact which opens when the motor hits end of travel. As with the inline resistor I suggested, you'd have to play with the values to find one that still works at the lowest supply voltage.
Every video on this channel makes me remember that day when I was putting fire safety pallets into sockets in a school and got shocked doing this in front of a whole class. Electroboom is the same idea, but the scale is way up.
I like how the plumber decided that the valves must be as close to the wall as possible, so that you need a special screwdriver to open them, instead of anywhere the the 3-4 foot of space between the valves and the boiler
It might have been two separate crews doing the work like the plumber who ran the pex around the house and then the HVAC boys installed the heater and valves and stuff and things.
Nice to see you here sir ;)
so they require their services again, if you dont have a special tool youre screwed
To be fair, all the plumbing is a shit show! So messy!
@@TheGazzap45 The wiring certainly is. OK, it's only 24V, but it's still crap.
7:48 Amazing, resoldering a disconnect by running high voltage through the circuit!
Most likely not, far more likely dust causing a short circuit which at LV remained, but HV burnt it away.
@@mrtango1824 Dust isnt conductive enough to cause a short circuit at low voltage.
Arc welding!
@@Godspamit Could have also been a loose or oxidized connection that was open cicuit at 30V,but became shorted at 120V and the connection welded from the high current.
I'm guessing metal shavings from the constant operation
As someone who has worked on everything from dehumidifiers to industrial boilers and refrigeration, I can say he missed his calling. Fantastic job again by Electroboom.
Telling an electrical engineer they can't do something is like questioning a wizard's power.
The moment he realized the motor had been "fixed" by short circuting was exactly the same as a wizard opening a book of dark magic.
They either succeed or kill themselves trying to prove everyone wrong?
@@inurokuwarz i remember a trick to fix those christmas lights if one bulb is burnt out and you don't wanna try to track it down: hook it up to a taser or other high-voltage source and zap it. this burns and welds the broken filament or something in the broken bulb, so the circuit is closed again. of course, this is very hacky
@@inurokuwarz "And they say dark magic is bad"
@@Spooglecraft and he even discovered it on -accident-
Research
"Higher voltage is potentially more dangerous" this is the highly scientific and educational content that I've watched years of electroboom for. I wish they taught wisdom like this in schools.
They haven't found a way yet considering how many dudes turn into mist on a yearly basis wrangling the damn stuff.
Hehe, _potential_ ly.
As someone that does commercial HVAC controls for a living, it was interesting seeing you work through this problem.
Same here, it’s cool seeing how someone this smart troubleshoots something I’m very familiar with
HVAC, more like highway robbery!
Hectic stuff
the short circuit path is probably there in case all of the valves close, so you don't get a huge pressure spike and the water can continue to flow
Or it could be one of the safety features when you ask for a low flow rate (valves almost closed). I think these type of units need at least some flow, else they could get dangerous
Yes, but it should be a restricted flow.
you have been promoted above Doctors.
So it's a flyback diode.
We have this bypass in chiller water cooled systems. It exists so the evaporator has a constant water flow even if there is no demand in the line.
I love these kinds of videos, where he fixes stuff
That's why I liked this one more than others
That's weird, most of us like when he blows stuff.
Yeah, these are nice videos along when he builds (and blows up) something
Me too!
He fixes stuff?
HVAC tech working on EE degree here, love the videos. This one brought me back to early days of my apprenticeship where I had to figure out the same issues. Having the nest controller makes things so much nicer
That sounds like such a cool career/educational path. How old are you, if I may ask?
@@kerimgueney Since you haven't gotten a reply, here's the way I got into HVAC which is one of many possible paths. I was an electrical apprentice for a while, then got a job with an HVAC controls company installing control equipment. I've known plumbers that got into HVAC the same way. From there, experience and interest can move you into the refrigeration side or the controls side. I went the controls route, but it would have been just as easy to go in any direction, and most trades companies will cooperate with schools to complete your training at the same time.
Basically start at the bottom and work your way up, following your interests.
@@zierlyn thank you. I appreciate the detailed response.
I love how plumbing jumped to rocket science instantly 😂
Wait till you realize that the majority of rocket science is just fancy plumbing.
Yeah. The fact that hot water and cold water pipes are just shorted seems like wizardry and rocket science.
@@SneeuwPoesjes get 2 liquids to the bottom of a tube
uh huh, "Fancy" plumbing
Two words: Colin Furze
I have some electrical engineering degrees and don't know jack about plumbing. I just call the plumbing guys and pay them, and all is well.
Whenever I see a big boiler, I always wonder how compact you could get it without taking away functionality. Then I realise that keeping it big and spread out is pretty key to keeping it easily repairable.
As long as a child can fit inside we can keep the trai... boiler running forever
Basically the exact opposite of smartphone design!
That is why things with "industrial" grade tend to be big for seemingly no reason
@@QualityDoggo yet most people want them thinner and more complex lol.
Larger heat exchangers are generally more efficient as well.
A word from the wise (and experienced). Honeywell zone valves are quite troublesome. I've had the gear on the motor strip out because it's made of soft material, the motors themselves get weak and wont go far enough to set the end switch. I use caleffi now and haven't had any more issues or callbacks. The actuator units have a lever that releases them from the body without opening the system. Honeywell has two small screws deep inside that make it tougher to change. Caleffi has a higher cv( flow ) rate
Honeywell & M.K. electrical goods have become fairly unreliable over the last few yrs, but the M.K. prices have remained rather high. ( M.K. & Honeywell are the same same company)
Planned obsolescence.
Sure thing buddy I could say the same about caleffi, it does have a higher flow rate, but the inverse flow of ac to dc conversion with lower string coils per cubic metre has led to a lot of companies opting for honeywell systems. Not to mention the 8 year old who got electrocuted at 45 meters distance from a caleffi motor last spring which caused a black out in arkansas?
@@callmex5406 can you provide me with the data on this incident.
@@garyangelstad5212 obviously the news was taken off the internet after the company issued a media blackout. The courts were in on it.
As a mechanical designer, I have to admit: Electrical engineering is often basically some kind of sorcery to me.
I mean... I get how a lightbulb works... but that's basically it.
Lightbulbs are not that easy any longer.
I had the pleasure of being taught physics by a FermiLab scientist. She was smart enough, and I mean no disrespect she was very smart, to know when I needed conceptual vs practical answers to questions I had about capacitors, inductors, etc.
Different people need different approaches to electrical engineering.
mechanical stuff we can actually see things in motion. 1 action cause another. electricity and electronic is like wizardry to me.
@@muzallisam5068 oscilloscopes are the prized possessions of electrical engineers. They make the invisible world of electricity visible.
Hey I work with an electrical engineer and he doesnt even have a simple understanding of how uneven pressing forces would create uneven pressures
This was actually fascinating, I'm finding your home electrical DIY videos to be excellent.
Very cool. I'm an hvac tech ...ive never tore apart a zone valve that far. I fix these things all the time but still learned something today. Cool.
The only time I've taken one apart instead of just replacing the head was when I was a trainee and was instructed to "change the head on that valve". Still remember my bosses confusion 15 years later as to why was the old one in pieces in the box when at first he thought I was wasting time on pissing about. Difference between theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge.
I have the same kind of setup in my house except it's from the 80s and with only two zones, I had to replace the transformer and I pretty much ditched all the old electronics to make my own, now each zone is on a relay controlled by Home Assistant and I made my own thermostats powered by an ESP32. All the issues I had before were electrical too!
ua-cam.com/users/shortsH3hL08Ka-_4?feature=share
ua-cam.com/users/shortsH3hL08Ka-_4?feature=share
Nice
Microcontrollers are the best thing since sliced bread.
@The Game Shorts 🅥 you've posted this link on every video I've seen last week. It's an ice cream recipe... You're spamming comment sections for an ice cream recipe..
8:57 "what are you burning?!?" -Medhi's family every day
Mehdi : What are you burning ?!?! The wire : idk man .
I love how he always injures himself or other devices for our entertainment safely. A good man.
I read that comment just as he gets to the explosion scene lol
Isn't it fun when something like this breaks down? You get all the fun of debugging an issue with an at this point pretty complicated device, all while dealing with the frustration of your heating or whatever other important thing not working...
Unless it's in winter and you have no heater left.
@@goku445 honestly that comment was like, at least 75% sarcasm. I'm not actually a fan of having to do this sort of thing :P
@@jdatlas4668 Right. I read too fast your comment. I actually enjoy fixing stuff, that's why my comment.
Fully agree, electrical engineers are on the top!
..we have unlimited access to black magic... 👀
untill we let the magic smoke come out, then we have none :P
I have been installing complexed hydronic systems for 40 years. I would never let an electrician much less an electrical engineer wire any of my systems. lol
As a Mechanical Engineer, I'm tempted to ask "a friend" that I know to turn Medhi into a frog! ;) LOL! Of course I wouldn't really do that, but if my friend _did_ turn him into a frog, then he could redo some of Galvani's experiments with electricity & frogs.
Seriously though, his troubleshooting was interesting and the repairs appear to have worked, at least until the too-high voltage kills more motors. I half expected him to replace the power supply with a regulated 24VAC PSU.
@@anthonyspadafora1384 What, because we'd be able to point out all the things you've been doing wrong for those last 40 years?
:P
;)
Sorry couldn't help myself
Hi
My father and grandfather are electrical engineers and I can relate to the hierarchy, literally every problem is fixed by them
@dejuren Yes. But it might hurt.
@@dejuren1367you'd be shocked
Fail safe valves, what a concept! This design always uses the full travel of the valve and is very reliable on the 'wet' side. The proportional valves tend to be much less reliable, especially if the control system does not have routines that use the full travel regularly. As a former electronics engineer, who used (amoungst other things) to maintain the control system in a glasshouse comples with over 120 indiviual climate controlled compartments, I know a fair amount about these valves and their failure modes. Most of my callouts were to find that the control system was fine, but there was a mechanical problem, or that the control gear (the electricians responsibilty) was at fault. One proportional valve design that I liked, but was let down by a poor control board design, used a solenoid to pull the valve open, with the coil being phase angle controlled. The response was very non linear, but we had flow and return temperature sensors, so the non linearity would be taken out by the PID loop.
Was hopping down to look for exactly this comment, simpler mechanical design by leaving the motors live and if the system ever failed electrically the valves should close.
Makes me wonder if there is an elegant way to reduce/eliminate the power use without losing the failsafe.
@@Loran425 Oh, there is a way: pneumatic actuators with spring return to closed. The obvious problem is the need for compressed air to operate the actuators.
@@Loran425 a small latch on the spring actuated by a small electrical current? Basically, add something that can be controlled with the smallest possible electrical circuit to reduce the power needed.
Or, some failsafe that is sensitive to a state change in the electrical system. I don't know enough to imagine what that would be, probably some digital doohickey.
@@Loran425 internally piloted solenoid valve have much less power consumption and have exactly same behaviour as this.
@@Loran425 My old dishwasher door actuator uses a wax motor so you get it hot and it opens by thermal expansion. Without power the wax cools and contracts. It's not critical these valves open lightning fast so why not. All they are is a heater, wax that expands under heat, and a spring. On the plus side the valves would close suuuuper slow so as to never slam shut.
As a plumber myself, Mehdi actually got most of the stuff right, just wandering who the hell did those pipes, they look so unorganized to me.
Every time I've hired a plumber they'll see something the last plumber did and go "Yeah that's garbage, did you get an idiot to fix it?"
@@inurokuwarz exactly
@@inurokuwarz Sounds like programmers too
@@inurokuwarz You wouldn't get it, its a plumber thing. Just believe us, we mean it.
@@inurokuwarz And then you tell him, that it was he who was called last time 🤣
Even with the voltage dropping when all motors are running, these motors would also work fine at 22VAC you could still drop the voltage from 31V to 27V, then a single motor would at least only get ~25-26V instead of 29-30
Makes me wonder if they're using an older transformer made for 110 v hence why the higher output on 120 v... or maybe the plumbers that did this are dumb and got the wrong transformer?
@@bluerilius4362 Could also be a chinese transformer because they mostly rate stuff for 110 or 220 V, not for 115, 120, 230 or 240.
@@mernok2001 perhaps that may be
"WHAT ARE YOU BURNING?" Actually made my day, keep up the great work, iheMd!
Mehdi*
@@eduardopereira1915 that was the joke yes.
@@Vesterian Ok.
But what was burning actually?
ua-cam.com/users/shorts6lrPUb5echQ
I love how entertaining he makes these videos. Truly one of a kind channel. Mehdi makes learning fun. ❤️
Hi Medi, I’m a commercial engineer and I do a lot of pipework design - Re the pipework: The installer has tried to create a basic low loss header but (for many reasons) the primary pipework appears to be undersized and the connections for flow and return are too close together.
Also there should be a by-pass between the circulator and the zone valves.
I could write an essay on the correct way to do it… but if it’s working, please don’t start re-plumbing it! 😂😂😂
It would be awesome to watch Mehdi fix the underlying issues that caused this problems. Run a dedicated 15 Amp line in the walls replace the transformer with a power regulator, or alternatively completely over engineer a system from the thermometers to the valves changing the signal to digital or at least DC
You can also probably get the motors rated for mains voltage and use the 28V to control a relay.
Or just unwind a few turns from the transformer (or wind a few turns backward) so the voltage at full load is lower than 24V (use an autotransformer to find out the minimal voltage at which the valves still work and just use slightly higher voltage.
My radiators just have a mechanical thermostat on each one.
I worked on an old 5 zone system that had 5 circulating pumps. Expensive, but it has super redundancy. One of the zones had a high velocity pump. Then someone replaced it with a standard circulating pump. The zone for the bedrooms (which were at the far end of a sprawling house) was not keeping that end of the house warm in really cold weather.
yeah, and then when they move the new owners need an electrical engineer to fix everything that he over engineered because your average plumber/hvac guy isn't going to want to touch it.
That was honnestly disappointing when he said : "Done!" And we saw nothing. wtf
glad to see the mech engineer trolling goes across the Atlantic ocean :')
My thoughts exactly, I felt right at home. ;)
Same as "yellow chemistry bad" I'd imagine.
as a student studying chemical engineering i was going to complain that it didn't make it into the hierarchy, but then i remembered that chemical engineering is just extreme plumbing. so we did make it into the list, above mechanical engineers. score
Plumbing is just the base of it all apparently. Aren’t electrical engineers and electricians just electron plumbers?
I love slowing down unexepected events to see if people were expecting them. 5:50 was completely genuine
As an electrical engineer -- I feel validated ;)
Michael Steeves, same here. And I'm certain Mehdi's heirarchy opinion is completely unbiased. 😅
As an astrophysicist I do not.
As mechanical engineer student i feel insulted. i did take extra electrical classes tho.
@@benjamin4321 and structural engineers are below janitors lmao
As an IT engineer I felt like I ducked in time.
Every single mechanical engineer who watched his video is mad now. We are mad.
10:58
This system resets itself to a known state; all valves automatically close completely upon loss of power, it's not possible to end up half-open. Using D/C motors and limit switches in the "closed" position could do the same, but then you need more I/O pins on the controller ($$), more switches ($), a decent power supply instead of just a cheap transformer ($$), more code to handle the "closed" switches (which means more potential bugs & more programming $$$$$)...
It's the cheapest system that gets the job done and mostly doesn't fail before the warranty expires. Looks like a good engineering job to me! :D
But the circulation pump would shut down in a power outage, who cares if the valve is open in a closed loop system? A simple check valve will stop any water reversing flow.
These days (alleged chip shortage aside) micro-controllers are dirt cheap, most commercially available (heck, even hobbyist versions) have enough IO pins that can be multiplexed to work very cheaply. The coding cost is debatable as well, and entirely dependent on the number of units sold/installed. Here in Australia such water based heating systems are rare, so yeah, all components inc programming would be expensive, but I believe pretty common in the northern hemisphere so less of an issue.
And your assumption of a decent power supply being more expensive than the potential "life of product" power drain of this cheap alternative could be argued.
"mostly doesn't fail before the warranty expires" is cold comfort (pun intended) and a poor metric... good for the seller/manufacturer I guess, but this planned obsolescence is bad for the planet, as it needs yet more replacement parts to be made and consumed over the actual life of the entire installation.
so add bit of code or even circuit logic that upon restart, drive all valves to close/open for few second and then normally control them.
imo you really don't need much I/O Pins, just rs-flip-flops, a shift register and a timer. Heck, you could even use an fpga for all that. Implement a proprietary or public open source serial protocol and all you'd need are like two I/O pins at minimum, better yet four as twisted pairs for RX and TX.
Why not relays?
It wouldn't even need any electronics, just a single "horseshoe" rocker double pole switch would work
“Interesting how this plumbing problem turned out to be electrical”
Sounds like whatever discipline of engineering that normally does HVAC did their job right, I wonder which types of engineers those are 🤔
Perhaps it has something to do with machines?
Mechanical and electrical 😊
@@jrisner6535 drain lines and furnace venting makes them plumbers too
Cryptographer you are, huh?
😉
Vulcan engineers?
German?
Japanese?
Don't give me any Static, I am trying my best.
How about any engineer that knows when to use a normally open circuit over closed, and vise versa?
They aren't engineers, they are architects!!!!
This is so interesting my friend. How your investigation drove you to the reason why your AC motors failed at the first place. That s terrific!
Watching your near misses helps calm me while I do simple electrical tasks around the house. As long as I verify the circuit is dead and be mindful of the potential of injury I feel much more confident I won't burn the house down.
As an offended Mechanical Engineer, I'm pleased to see that the problem was electrical as usual.
Hahahaha made my day (mechanical engineer)
Dear Mehdi, thank you for making these videos. I've learned so much in electrical engineering from your videos, while having a laugh from your content. Your content unironically makes my job in engineering easier.
1:12 as a mechanical engineer my cold steel heart feels hurt
better than architects, they didn't even make it on the list
The "shorted" hot water pipe is a bypass. It mixes super hot water from furnace with cold water. This way your radiators are safe to touch. You can think about this like voltage divider. Ofter there is a valve working like potentiometer so you can dial up output temperature.
Normally there will be a thermostat in the boiler to regulate the output temperature. Pretty sure that loop is there to enable continuous flow even if all the heating circuit valves are closed.
It also make the return water a bit warmer when goes into the hot boiler parts and reduce temperature shock.
Lol what
It is a bypass, but not for the reason you mentioned. The closely spaced tees provide what we call ‘hydraulic separation’. By doing this, the water flow through the boiler remains constant, regardless of how many zones are turned on.
I doubt that its used to lower the temperature since its a gas boiler that can just turn on/off or modulate when necessary. Such a precaution is only required if you have a wood furnace or have a heater that heats up a seperate tank with the water inside. This would be one of the reasons why you would require a bypass here
I Love you mehdi!
I designed particle accelerator electronics for 4 years, and me and my colleagues would watch your videos for inspiration. For example your Jakobs ladder was used as a 1000V power supply for a mock up injection kicker for ISIS Neutron and Muon Source in Rutherford. Keep up the good work, you might be helping more than you know.
Cool
You know, I took an electrical engineering final yesterday, and it was nowhere near as fun as this channel
That is an impressive heating system. I feel like a cave man with my propane furnace
But I bet yours works.
This heating system is barely the minimum requirement in Europe!
@@MyNotSoHumbleOpinion Yeah, not at all
I have a kerosene furnace....
@@g3th_ then let's say in civilized Europe. in Italy every replacement of the heating system must be done in this way with at least a condensing or biomass boiler! Each new construction must instead have at least one hybrid system with a water heat pump, solar panels and photovoltaic panels!
The "short-circuit" is the correct way to plumb that boiler. It is called primary-secondary pumping\piping. There are two circulator pumps. The primary pump circulates water through the boiler's heat exchanger. The secondary pump circulates the water through each of your zones for heating. This primary pump is actually located on the inside of your combi boiler. What I did notice is that the zone valves are not on the correct end of the zone piping. Zone valves should be installed on the return side of the piping so as to not to cause water hammer when the zones shut. Because the pump is creating head pressure and pumping into the zone valves, there will be a spike of pressure when the valves shut from the head pressure of the pump. This can result in a knocking noise whenever any of your zones shut. I would recommend moving the zone valves to the return side of the zones if possible.
The voltage you are getting from the power supply should not really hurt those motors too much. Its pretty much a nominal voltage difference from what the motors are rated for. Most zone valve panels like the one you have output 27-26VAC to the valves. All the end switches on each zone valve are usually wired in parallel to the T-T (AKA thermostat) terminals on the boiler signaling the boiler to run. Each thermostat makes and breaks the 24V power going to each of the corresponding zone valve motors by disconnecting one leg coming from the secondary side of the transformer. If you continue to burn out that same motor I would recommend replacing the valve body and not just the motor. Usually what happens is mechanical resistance occurs at the valve stem over time from scale/buildup inside the valve. This scale/buildup will cause the motor to prematurely wear out over time.
This advice is coming from a professional mechanical contractor/HVAC tech with 12yrs experience with hydronic/steam heating. Hope this helps you out.
Maybe they just want the valves to close by themselves when you have a power outage, kinda like a fire door that is normally held open by an electro magnet ?
I was just about to write the same :)
Correct. They also need to keep it simple with as few parts as possible as must be reliable for hundreds of operations.
Thats exactly why such design is used, im stunned this EE guy can't realize such simple concept...
Why does a valve needs to be closed during power outage? The water supply/circulation has stopped as the circulation pump has stopped too.
Why would the valves need to close by themselves during a power outage?
I really loved this video. Troubleshooting, fixing, explaining... felt like a mystery puzzle and I loved it.
9:00 Was the most genuine reaction I have seen from you yet, Mr. Explosion! Priceless!
I'd love to know what was burning haha
@@Agent24Electronics agreed!!
I mean, rocket science is basically plumbing explosions, so I think having plumbing and rocket science on the same level seems fair...
I like that doctors stayed on the same teir XD
i mean, also electrical engineering is basically plumbing for electrons XD
I think a follow up fixing/upgrading the power supply to run a constant 24v would be pretty cool
Seems like a no brainer
2:00 This setup is a passive mixer; it reduces/balances temparature by joining the forerun and backrun of the loop at some point. Most of the time, there's also a reduction inside the plumbing where the two pipes join to reduce flow rate.
if medhi was an aerospace engineer he would know that!! (taught in thermo 1)
8:54 I had to laugh internally when I saw it smoking and Mehdi didn't notice ;)
The angry (not scared at all) response to the smoke: "What are you burning?!?" (with a "Why do you allow yourself to burn?!?" between the lines)
ua-cam.com/users/clipUgkxDSHMD50O3HOqk5imXehDZN3caF4WiqtT
Electrical engineers are basically plumbers... gotta make sure everything is flowing, no leaks, and if something breaks there's going to be a lot of damage to your house.
This was one of the best videos ive seen from you. Honestly really awesome to learn about every day powerpixies, that you normally wouldnt know about.
2:00 Seems fair. Rocket science does involve a lot of extreme plumbing after all.
*looks in horror at wire plugged into 110VAC socket with bare wire nuts dangling in the air*
ua-cam.com/users/shortsH3hL08Ka-_4?feature=share
You can feel the sketchyness ooze through the screen
I didn't see any earthing either
that's why you don't let plumbers do electric work
No problem, it's ony Americam wimpy 110 volts, try getting away wiyj that on 240volts!
Absolutely one of the best teachers I’ve ever had
I work at a motor company. I've heard a bit of an urban legend that once, many years ago, there was a tiny strand of copper causing a short that stopped a motor from functioning. The fix? Shock the sh*t out it and burn out the short. Maybe that's what happened to you? Who knows
I love this rivality between mechanical and electrical engeneers !
I start getting anxiety as soon as the cover comes off and the more dangerous parts start getting yanked around. I know it's intentional, but it still gets me
You should, with your moniker, look at Big Clive's video on wood-burning art using high-voltage transformers. It would, er, relax you...
Lol i remember when I used to be like that
I never knew watching someone's frustrations could be so rewarding. Lol.
Thanks for that , and the belly laughs too.
Much love.
God bless 🙏
dam, this is one of few videos that despite being 14mins long, finished in seconds.
The added complexity of something that used to be simple just furthers my need to live in a cave.
The bypass/short circuit path has a pressure relief valve in it. In case the water gets very hot and the syatem pressure increases, the bypass valve opens to inlet.
The supervent closest to the bypass actually just removes air from the system, the pressure relief right next to it dumps water into a drain.
Why would it connect to the inlet? I think it should vent to atmosphere / drain instead. The pressure in the system can still rise otherwise.
@@marco23p it doesn’t. The big thing with Honeywell on the side just vents air that gets trapped in the system the pressure relief to the right of that just dumps water down the drain, which isn’t great as you’ll never know when it’s hitting pressure
Loved this Mehdi, really happy with all of these home DIY repair videos that just extend the EE knowledge to other areas. Great stuff. Thanks for encouraging me to repair things and to understand complex systems.
At 5:58 get ready for some good Electroboom style jumpscare...!!
6:00
Reminds me of that one time he pulled the auto transformer and says it “””REDUCES””” the voltage
GreatScott is yelling at the screen at 11:54 for using those nuts instead of Wago blocks
Taco does make a system that has an input board that takes the old constant 24v signal when calling for heat and uses it to drive DC zone valves. They're almost standard in really big manifolds by now
genuine question, what model are those zone valves? Every zone valve ive seen for heating is AC but I only do residential house work.
I had this exact problem at my parents house a while back. The motors ran really really hot when they were on and a couple wouldn't work at all... Now I know why. Thanks for sharing your findings (also as an EE myself I died with the MechE joke...uh I mean fact)
please release a short or a 2nd channel video fixing the plumber wiring!
@Don't Read My Profile Photo i wont lol.
I suppose the motor fight against the spring and button all the time to have a fail-safe setup. If the power is lost or a motor dies, all valves close.
Neither valve position is "safer" than that other tbh. It's is a legacy system that was designed for least possible complexity; voltage applied valve opens, voltage not applied valve shut. These would traditionally have been controlled by a simple bi-metallic strip style thermostat.
@@underdweller If the thermostat fails why would the boiler continue to run?
@@underdweller The heater needs electricity to turn on. If the motors don't have power the heater won't have it either.
@@danieljensen2626 The motors can lose power independent of the heater, or fail themselves just like what happened here.
Close but it's precisely because there is no power when the thermostat is *not* calling for service.
Normally the reason for these valves using springs and constant-on motors is that in the event of a power failure they'll all open, allowing free flow of water so you don't end up with weird pressure issues while the boiler isn't powered. It probably also helps distribute a bit of heat to the radiators through convection, so your house doesn't cool down quite as fast.
the electrical box at the end was the cherry on the pie. Can I say that I loved to see the horror?
As a mechanical engineer who just graduated from my undergraduate studies……..I can confirm that Medhi’s rating system is correct😪😂
In all seriousness, I love what I do and will Stan MEs as the highest form of engineering as long as I live! 💪🏽😎
Speak for yourself 😂
It is. The most versatile of engineers
if you can pee you can plumb. mechanical engineers need to be above people that can pee
The "short circuit" Is what is called primary secondary piping. This piping arrangement decouples the flow rates from the boiler pump and the zone pump. You can override the zone valves with the little levers protruding from the side of the zone valves. Your zones have no flow valves and you do not have a variable speed pump to maintain pressure. In other words if all the zone valves are open the water will take the path of least resistance. add flow valves to each zone return...set the variable speed pump for 8 psi...open one zone at a time and adjust flow valve to obtain a 20 degree delta T. None of the trades you mentioned do this type of work properly. What you need is an HVAC hydronic tech. We are very few in the US but very plentiful in Europe.
So is it a really short single pipe heat exchanger?
@@im1random263 www.caleffi.com/sites/default/files/coll_attach_file/idronics_15_na.pdf This is a really well done article on this. Enjoy
@@im1random263 p.27
@@anthonyspadafora1384 🤔
at 10:29 I'm like, "that is a stupid design". A few seconds later I was glad to hear you thought so too
You are of course certified to do plumbing and operations.. I mean you are an electrical engineer after all, and you are also mehdi
As an HVAC guy with over 35 years experience, I can tell you why it is designed that way.
In many control and actuators they have fail safe logic. In other words they fail or go back to a certain position or state if all power is lost. Let's say you have a damper actuator that powers open to bring in fresh ventilation air into a building or system. If the power fails in the winter you Don't have power to drive the actuator closed so the building freezes and damages the building. If you have a motor in opposition to spring tension and the power drops the spring tension will drive the actuator to it's fail safe position. Normally open or normally closed.
I had to go investigate a large building that suffered over 800,000.00 of damage during a power outage in the winter.
Someone who doesn't understand fail safe logic put in an actuator that was drive open drive closed on a 6 foot by 10 foot economizer fresh air damper for the building.
They fired up an emergency generator set to get heat going in the building in one area. The building maintenance technician tried to share heat from one area to another by putting circulation fans in manual or bypass mode. This bypassed the inoperable building management system and he froze up the entire building because of a motor just like the one you are holding in your hand but much larger with 150 ft. Lbs. Of torque.
Sometimes the few mili or micro watts of power are worth the trade off. 😉
Sometimes Electromechanical engineers are smarter than people realize.
11:00 Be mindful that municipal codes may require that type of design even if it is wasteful. Check with a local plumber familiar with them.
This is my problem with engineers, even if the cheaper thing works the same, we have rules and codes that regulate what equipment you can use all over the world... Electricians and typical trade-workers understand this but engineers are just like "lulz, just using this" 😂
considering the electrical connections done here, point is kinda mute
@Samuel that's half-right, half-wrong though. We still do have national norms and architecture laws which mandates certain technological processes in certain applications. For instance, you cannot use just any random pipe when doing heating installations - it does have to be certified for certain temperature, pressure and material hardness. Also, you cannot use tin-based soldering joints on piping with operation temperatures exceeding 150 degrees Celsius.
Mehdi: Electrical engineers are at the top of the hierarchy, plumbers are at the bottom
Mehdi two seconds later: *Points to plumbing* “I don’t know what this magical device is” 💀
Turns out it was a water freewheel diode
@@hugofontes5708 can you make a full bridge rectifier out of that?
@LazuliteLol maybe. But most water lines are already direct current systems. So there's nothing to rectify.
As an electrical engineering student, I absolutely agree with that dominance hierarchy.
Medhi, the "magic device" (1:20) is a simple pump that makes water to flow. this type of pump is silent, the only method you can see if it is actually pumping water is to touch it and see if it vibrates (is a very low vibration). you can also increase the speed of the pump (but not on all models) with a rotating gear on the alimenting box (sorry if i do gramm. errors, i'm Italian and not fully understand english :D )
The switch in the valve is a "call for heat" signal to the boiler when the valve is open, so as long as the valve and it's corresponding thermostat/timer are both "calling for heat" then the boiler will fire up.
The reason they use that design is so in case of disaster / power outage the valves close. This helps in case power is out in freezing temperatures. If you purged the line it would be problematic if water is turned on but not power, and it freezes in the lines, or if you need to do any plumbing work and power is out, the lines stuck open.
THE MOTORS ARE AMAZING! 12:00
I believe the reason they have to stay on when the valve is open and close with a spring is to keep the valve close in case of a power failure. So if you use them for something that can spill out (and maybe catch fire, like fuel) they fail a little safer.
In electrical speak, they want the water lines supervised. Aka if there's a problem, they want someone to notice and fix it.
In this case, the system is telling you there's a problem with the valve by cutting off your heat till you fix it.
Fire alarm systems work in a similar manner, except they get nice and loud speakers and flashing lights to tell you something is wrong and you need to GTFO (or just the control panel starts to scream to get a tech in to fix it)
1:00 as an engineering student and an electronics enthusiast I agree with you, you're 100% correct
when Mehdi does anything sudden I always flinch, not because I'm scared *of* him, but because I'm scared he's going to get an electric shock.
That's his signature. I'm pretty confident he's smart enough to stay away from lethal zaps.
Its all for show
9:09, we're currently calculating this stuff in class. I feel so clever being able to understand that.
So you are worried about 15 watts of power which all turns to heat when turning on a zone that probably goes back to a 5000watt tankless heater? The real problem is that the waste power doesn't just go to heat, it also goes into destroying the motors themselves. The reason they are designed this way is so that they don't need any power to turn off.
on the right side of the valve (the 5 vertical ones) there is a little metal tab that allows you manually open or close the valve.
damn the overlay at 9:21 tricked me real well, you can for sure leave it like that !
The casual "What are you burning?" killed me lmfao
2:37 Mehdi is so Canadian 🇨🇦 🍁- “… and nothin’ aye?” 😂😂😂
Very informative. I’d like to see the re-wiring in the transformer box…
I like how they put the electrical box underneath the pipes too. Hopefully one of the pipes don't bust or start leaking right over it!
6:50 When he wet his skin to see if he would feel anything then he screamed in a British accent😂😭
Just a thought, but how about putting a resistor in line with each motor to take off some of the stress. I did a quick calculation (which may be wrong) which said a 6-8 ohm resistor would drop the voltage the motor sees closer to 24V. Unfortunately the resistor would end up dissipating 3+ watts. You'd have to play around to find a value that still runs the motor despite any dips in the supply voltage.
I was thinking the same thing, but I was too lazy to determine a resistor value. A trick which I think is sometimes used is to have full voltage connected "normally" but when the motor triggers the end of travel switch put a larger resistor in series. Depending on the wiring this could be easy, otherwise it could be done with a relay. By using two power levels like this much greater efficiency can be achieved.
I was also thinking that but if all the valves are on it could drop to low and the motor wouldn't run.
I don't understand why they make it so that all the motors can run at the same time at all... Just give it a little smarts and make them turn on 1 by 1. Make it a steady 24v... But at that point ur probably better off going the mentioned DC system anyways
@@Shark-8472 I think there is a reason why they have don it like this, like if you have an error and there is no Voltage, so that they will all close.
@@eDoc2020 I like that idea. Have a second resistor which is normally shorted by a normally closed contact which opens when the motor hits end of travel. As with the inline resistor I suggested, you'd have to play with the values to find one that still works at the lowest supply voltage.
Motors are quite tolerant of overvoltage.
Every video on this channel makes me remember that day when I was putting fire safety pallets into sockets in a school and got shocked doing this in front of a whole class. Electroboom is the same idea, but the scale is way up.
2:55 true nature unveiled