A Manitoba plumber and hydronic heating system designer will be going to Italy after his installation won a North America-wide contest.
Bill Olschewski of Tip Top Plumbing & Heating, Winkler, Man. and a guest have won a trip to Italy to see Caleffi World Headquarters and will receive a tour of the factories and design facilities.
He won the year-long Caleffi Excellence contest, where designers and installers of hydronic or plumbing systems are invited to showcase their work, with a combination heating/cooling and domestic hot water system for a large home. His design goal was to produce a highly energy efficient system with the workmanship and appropriate componentry to deliver a long service life for the owners.
multi-zone system
In his own words: “We created five zones and zoned using variable speed circulators. On these zones, we used Caleffi three-way thermostatic mixing valves to provide consistent temperature to the emitters. On one of the zones, we further divided it into five subzones using zone valves. The Caleffi zone relay and pump relay controls were used because they can communicate as one control and make for simpler programming and wiring.
“We also made two high temperature zones using fixed speed circulators and controlled by another Caleffi relay. On top of the two Triangle Tube Smart indirect hot water heaters are Caleffi air vents, which we have had good luck with.
“In addition to incorporating a coalescing air separator, we used a Caleffi dirt separator with the magnetic feature. There are several iron and steel components used in the system and the magnetic elimination of particles gave that extra measure of protection of the other components. Another Caleffi component used was the Autofill valve, which makes filling pretty easy.
The project went pretty smoothly.”
And so far the system has been working as designed and the customer is happy, he reported.
Coffee with Caleffi
The top twelve monthly finalists were determined by most votes received from the Coffee with Caleffi webinar series. Each, received an iPad Mini computer. A panel of industry experts and Caleffi executives chose Olschewski’s installation as the grand prize winner. They were impressed by how his mechanical room upgrade included creating five zones using Caleffi zone valves and relay controls to simplify programming and wiring.
Caleffi has already announced its Caleffi Excellence contest for 2016, which begins in January. Visit us.caleffiexcellence.com for contest details.
