Do what and do why??
What’s wrong with you? You’re suppose to guess what is in others minds!!
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I agree. Placing combustible materials near the vent hood is dangerous.
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You can’t see the picture?
To me it looks like a boiler that was set up to be convertible to or was converted from an indirect water heater for DHW. There are couplings soldered on two of the verticals suggesting this boiler was a retrofit. There’s a backflow preventer with vent on the supply side for makeup water for the hot water baseboards.
Those valve bypasses are strange, but if you cut out that single valve and insert a circ pump, it makes more sense. This system would allow you to add the pump before or after the devices and it was done this way because it wasn’t known at the time of install.
What doesn’t make much sense to me is using gate valves. ugh. Probably why there are two in a line.
Without seeing how it’s plumbed on the boiler, it’s hard to say, but this is most certainly a boiler, and it seems like they replaced the indirect water heater with a conventional because they didn’t like running their boiler year round.
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So you are guessing because the OP did not provide any concerns or information and the OP’s pictures do not include a farther out picture for context. Instead the OP sees something they have not before and is unable or afraid to articulate their concerns. So yes I repeat my sentence of:
I certainly see the picture and see things that do not make sense but what is it that the OP sees and is concerned about?? I don’t waste my time with guessing what is in other people’s minds.
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Several points.
- I have installed boilers, I have a pretty good understanding.
- He asked why someone would do this. He didn’t ask or describe what was wrong with it, he asked why. Without seeing if there were lower connections capped off that would have been plumbed for a IWH, yes, I’m guessing. It’s a pretty good guess though because I’ve seen tons of systems that were similar.
- There are tons of clues in what we see here. We see a gas heater, we see what looks like a conventional main boiler loop, we see a backflow preventer/vent. We see extra pipes and such. This is all information that allows us to deduce a few things.
i.e.:
-This is a boiler
-the boiler has been replaced
-the water heater has been replaced.
Then you can ask, why you would have bypasses like that? The main answer for that is it was or could be plumbed for an indirect water heater.
It could also be a plumber who just charges by time and each fitting he uses.
Of the two, which makes more sense?
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But more importantly, as a Home Inspector who is not a Systems Expert…
Is the System working as intended, and do you observe any defects, e.g. water leaks, corrosion, etc?
My job is not to determine ‘why’ something is, just if it is operating at the time of my inspection, and if not, to make the necessary recommendations for referrals.
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I agree with the above.
I figured this was more of an offhand, why the hell would someone do it this way, kind of thing.
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And I agree with that opinion,
BUT…
Then you run across his other thread in the Electrical section and one has to wonder if…??
(See what I did there)? 
It’s pretty obvious that this plumber and this electrician are related (maybe even the same guy).
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It’s part of the “Valves to Nowhere Program”, an element in “Build Back Better” to “Make America Great Again”, all bundled into the “Inflation Reducing/Increasing and Green Coal Energy Jobss” acts.
There, now the usual suspects can begin their daily political bickering.
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Zone boiler plumbing.
Some plumbers charge by the fitting and by the foot of pipe. That’s why they did it.
Clearly the work of Dr. Seuss.
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Are you playing around with AI again?