Wiring and hot water pipe safety

I have a newly installed Peerless boiler. *The HVAC installer used a TACO zvc406 *six zone control panel and Honeywell zone valves. **From the start the control did not function properly. *Zones were receiving heat
without requesting it. *He came out yesterday and said that the Honeywell zone valves and the Taco control panel didn't work together so he rewired the zone valves outside of the control panel. The control panel
now has one wire from all six zones and no longer has functioning indicator lights. *I now have a spaghetti
tangle of wires that he taped to the *main hot water pipe that the zone valves connect to. *Is this safe? *Is
this a code violation? I've never seen wires taped to a hot pipe before. *I questioned him about it and he
said it was safe as long as it didn't get over 180 degrees.

Contact your inspection department and have them give you the information as to who to contact at the state licensing level.

If everything was done by the local code standards the inspection department will be able to tell you.

I have no problem with someone doing their own work but everything done needs to be inspected for safety. Here is a prime example

If that is a new installation I'd consider that totally unacceptable. All the new equipment should function together properly and if I had paid for zone lights I'd sure want them to work! Tell him to get his act together and use a control board that will support the valves that he installed properly. On a new installation you should not have wires spliced outside proper boxes. Its a hack job on a new installation. Insist that it all work together PROPERLY and LOOK LIKE A PROFESSIONAL INSTALLATION!

Now if this is one of those jobs where only part of the system was replaced, well, then you sometimes run into these types of problems where you have to hack your way around some of the control hardware to get unmatched equipment to work together. In that case you have to decide if you want to shell out more $$ to get matching valves and control boards.

As to if its safe, most control wiring is 24 volts, so its not regulated the way higher voltage wiring is. Its probably okay, but personally I would want it cleaned up, splices in a box, with EMT or at least some flex covering the conductors to protect them form damage.

Call the installer and ask him to fix his work. If you can't get anywhere, like Eric said, call the town building inspector. They are paid to make sure installations are safe and proper.

-rick

I dont know why they cant the system to work.
A TACO ZVC406 controller can work with a two, three or four wire zone valve.

In simple terms. The t-stat wires come in through the top of the ZVC 406 and the zone valves get connected on the bottom.
The TT from the controller goes to the TT on the aquastat of the boiler.

The circulator can be powered off the aquastat or the end switch on the ZVC 406.

Aside from the circulator all the other wire is 24 volts and t-stat wire is usually used.

I think you need another installer to look at it.
I dont know where in NY you are but I would call another reputable place.

The Taco box will work with Honeywell zone valves. I have done it often when wiring up boilers. A working system can be achieved using wire nuts and tape, but Taco box makes things so much neater and easy to diagnose or monitor what is happening.

Make travel arrangements to get me to your place by 9:00 AM, provide some lunch, and I'll do the job and be done before dinner. We'll be dining out for that, your treat.

ActionDave said:

The Taco box will work with Honeywell zone valves. I have done it often when wiring up boilers. A working system can be achieved using wire nuts and tape, but Taco box makes things so much neater and easy to diagnose or monitor what is happening.

Make travel arrangements to get me to your place by 9:00 AM, provide some lunch, and I'll do the job and be done before dinner. We'll be dining out for that, your treat.

Click to expand...

don't forget that you being in CO, you'd be expecting the travel arrangements to include the red eye flight to JFK and limo service to Long Island or a regular evening flight and hotel accomodations as well. I designed (no big deal) and built my own 5 zone control panel with the indirect water heater priority zone. I live on (not "in") Long Island too. I know for sure that there are lots and lots of hacks here in every trade, and finding a decent one is much harder than "finding Waldo". That's why I do mostly everything myself. Last heating season I did not feel like servicing my oil burner myself, so I paid my oil company to do it. He did a good job of brushing out the heat exchangers on my Weil Mclain boiler, and replacing the filter, nozzle and setting the electrodes, but when I asked him isn't he going to remove the gun assembly from the boiler so he can vacuum out the chamber, he said it was not necessary as all that carbon would burn right up. Nor did he have a combustion analyzer. He looked in the peep hole and said "BEAUTIFUL" whoever set it up last time did a great job. Paid him 95 bucks for the job, don't know if that's cheap or not, but I always did a much better, more thorough job myself and had my friend use his B******ch analyzer to check out and tweak it if necessary.

Sorry for the little rant. I know here are many honest, experienced, caring trades people, but I've had success only twice (or was it once?) getting something done right by anybody we brought in in 40 years!

It is all low voltage wiring so there are few, if any, regulation governing the installation. As for the functionality of the controller, that depends on many variable as to whether his "solution" was the best, or only, one.