How do I calculate gas pipe size?

Folks,

In the process of installing a new boiler, but am not really sure how I should calculate the gas pipe size to the boiler.

The gas meter is just under 5 meters away (as the pipes will run) and this will be the only gas appliance in the house (the Kitchen is the opposite direction to the boiler too, so if any gas is needed or there, it won't need to branch off of the run the the boiler)

Can someone possibly help me understand how to calculate this!?

(There will need to be two bends in the pipe, I assume swept bends are going to be preferable here?)

Many thanks!

Reply to
Toby
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I'm no expert in these matters but we have a similar setup in our house and we have 18mm up to about 1m away from the boiler where it reduces to 15mm.

Reply to
R D S

You need two things - the maximum gas flow rate (in m^3/hour) the boiler will draw (this will depends on its max power input). and the tables from this document:

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The gas meter is just under 5 meters away (as the pipes will run) and

Basically assume the boiler needs at least 20mBar dynamic pressure at its input. The governor at the meter will be set to supply at 21mBar, therefore your pipe needs to drop no more than 1mBar dynamic pressure.

From memory, an elbow counts as an equivalent length of 0.5m of pipe, and a bend as 0.3m equivalent. So if you have five meters of pipe with two bends, then that is an effective length of 5.6m.

Reply to
John Rumm

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>> The gas meter is just under 5 meters away (as the pipes will run) and

Okay, thanks for that, on reading the link, you are quite correct, an elbow is 0.5m and a bend is 0.3m.

The boiler is a Vaillant EcoTEC 837, which is 37Kw. According to the manual needs up to 4M3/hour

It actually says "Connected load (if needed, related to stored charge/water heating) at 15 °C and 1013 mbar" Would that be the max it needs, as I can't see any other gas requirements listed?

If I am understanding this correctly, a 6m run of 22mm will give me 5.8 m3/h at 20mbar, so that's going to be fine. Even if the length was 9m, the delivery would be 4.6M3/h at 20mbar, so I am well within tolerance here.

Toby...

Reply to
Toby

Well if you take a m^3 of gas as 38.2MJ, then 37kW will require 133 MJ/h or 3.5 m^3 ish. So 4 sounds like a generous top limit to work to.

Yup, that sounds plausible. When I did my boiler it was 35kW and IIRC the max run of 22mm I calculated I could use was 12m. In reality I only needed 6, which I did in mostly 22 and only dropped to 15 at the union on the boiler. Dynamic pressure was fine.

Reply to
John Rumm

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