The art of system documentation

PAUL ROHRS,

contributing writer

Have any of your service technicians walked into a boiler-room and wished they had an idea of what the installing contractor had in mind? What about finding the actual installation and operation manual that was supplied with the equipment? That would be nice and should be considered a normal expectation.

“Forensic hydronics” can burn up a lot of time for service technicians as they try to identify offending components and what their function is supposed to be in relation to the system. Installing hydronic contractors and system designers can be the first line of defense in making future service work much easier to define.

What if on each job we spent a few minutes creating a simple pencil diagram with a basic mechanical drawing and a simply stated “sequence of operation.”

This can be a simple pencil drawing and won’t take much time, and you can label the pump P1, boiler B1, thermostat T1 and relay R1 for clarity. It can be this simple, or as a system gets more complex and has components that have more variables and required programming, the more time it should take to provide an overview of what has been installed. The objective is to leave a paper trail of the system your company designed.

In addition to making a service technician’s life a little easier, system documentation also provides another primary benefit. A well designed and drawn out system serves as a blue- print for your company’s installing contractor. This leaves very little room for initial installation errors. As copper tube and fittings have doubled in price over the last few years, even small mistakes that require re-piping can be costly in time and materials.

Now, let’s couple that simple diagram with a “Start-Up” sheet that includes homeowner name, job address, make and model of boiler. Start-up performed on “xx” date, with the initial gas pressure reading at the inlet. We now have a record of the system, and what the settings were at start-up, which is a great reference tool if problems arise.

With the advent of mod/con boilers, gas pressure at the inlet and total inches pressure drop are items that should not be overlooked and can be completed with a wide range of inexpensive gas pressure gauges. Combustion analyzer readings of CO2 on high-fire, CO readings on low-fire can also be included to further define the original readings at start-up.

All of this information compiled into an inexpensive plastic binder can not only provide a resource for the installing and servicing contractors, but it’s an excellent opportunity for you to leave your contact information and information about available service contracts to maintain the equipment that your company has designed and installed. This binder is also a great place to put all of the installation and operation manuals, user guides and warranty information.

As technology increases so will the need for better documentation. As systems have more complex capabilities, we need to arm ourselves with more documentation to support our installed equipment. Let’s also take a minute to talk about future upgrades and renovations. An unplanned addition a few years from now might also be a candidate for a heating package upgrade that includes solar, geo-thermal, solid-fuel or additional boilers. Knowing how to integrate future needs with the currently installed equipment will definitely keep you on the cutting edge of technology and might separate you even farther from your competition.

There are several software programs available now to support documenting our hydronic systems. John Siegenthaler’s Hydronicad program lets you drag-n-drop icons of standard hydronic equipment into a usable and printable format. Several manufacturers of hydronic equipment (Tekmar, Taco, Uponor, Danfoss) also provide proprietary stencils of their equipment that can be utilized with Microsoft Visio that allows quite a bit of versatility when documenting the electrical portion of the job that compliments the mechanical drawings. I like the Visio program because it also allows me to make my own re-usable stencils or drag jpeg images in to be converted into stencils.

Rob Brown of Northeast Radiant Technology uses “Powercadd” to document their systems. “As system designers, we work with clients to analyze heat loss, identify possible heat-sources and then design a system to optimize the clients’ thermal comfort.” After that has been established, Brown then moves into system design and drawings. The average end user typically only wants to adjust the thermostat up/down to preferred comfort levels. A system designer’s job is to simplify that process on the front end with correctly sized, selected, and installed equipment, and then follow it up with the necessary programming to control it correctly. Twenty-one questions can arise after a system has been installed where a simple flow chart can eliminate a service call. We installed a fully automated snowmelt system, and without it even snowing, we started taking phone calls that the system wasn’t working. Systems the owners had previously seen had slabs idling at 28-30 F and had a history of burning a lot of natural gas. Here was a solution that was easy to fax to the owners/end users so they can follow and understand why the boiler shouldn’t have been running. (This system did not employ the “Idle” feature.)

Thermostats are all too often getting more sophisticated than the equipment they control. Rob Brown of Northeast Radiant Technology also includes an essential settings guide for installed thermostats that is helpful.

Let’s take the next step and understand that as system designers and installers, we might not be the person servicing the equipment. If your company has a service contract, why not equip the servicing agent with the paperwork so that they know what they are walking into. Supply them with the necessary tools to quickly troubleshoot offending components and the hydronic world will be a better place. As shown, system documentation can, and should take on many different forms depending on the type of system and equipment selected.

Your company, if not the industry, will benefit from this documentation.