Hydrotherm Burners

Steve_51

IN REGARDS TO THE HYDROTHERM BURNERS, I SERVICE APPROXIMATELY 200 HC-125 & HC-145 BOILERS AS 1 OF OUR CONTRACTS. THE AIR QUALITY IS A HUGE FACTOR WITH THESE BURNERS, THE BOILERS THAT I SERVICE ARE IN THE AGRICULTURE SECTOR AND THE AIR IS VERY HIGH IN AMMONIA. I HAVE TRIED TO GET ANSWERS AND/OR WARRANTY FROM THE WHOLESALER AND HAVE HAD NO LUCK. FORGET ABOUT THE STAINLESS STEEL BURNERS THAT HYDROTHERM HAVE BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT MADE OF A QUALITY GRADE OF STAINLESS! I HAVE PROBABLY REPLACED APPROXIMATELY 200 BURNERS IN 4 YEARS.

STEVE

Terry_4

Has anyone seen this

happen before? Hydrotherm HC 125 installed in a garage (on 18" platform), boiler only 3 years old. Boiler and flue are clean. After replacement co was 26ppm. Any ideas would be appreciated. Warranty only covers burners for 1 year. Customer says why did this happen?

stevel

this was quite common in high moisture areas such as a garage, replace with the s.s. burner tube's and problem: will be solved
Steve

Unknown

Corrosion on burners

In addition to the concern about moisture it would be a good idea to address possibity of a chemically contaminated environment. These are hydroflouric and hydrochloric acids from such things as use of spray cans wirh cholorides or flourides in their formulation, waxes and cleaners left open, swimming pool chemicals,calcium choloride for thawing or sodium chloride for water softening, possible refrigerant leaks, paint or varnish removers, muriatic acid for cleaning cement and swimming pools, bleaches, solvents the list goes on.

The red discoloration tells me it is a possible flouride type contaminat as chorline types tend to turn metal green.

Don_4

burners

As was already stated ambient air contamination may be a problem. My first thought was condensing flue gasses. It is a normal problem in pool heaters(copper tube heat exchangers). What kind of controls are you running to maintain minimum boiler return temps?

Mark Hunt

I have seen this

on EVERY SINGLE Hydrotherm boiler on the Stratton Air Guard base.

We did the annual clean and tune on the heating systems on the base last year and I kid you not, every HT boiler we inspected had the same problem.

Gas pressures were ok and it was NOT an air quality issue. I believe it must be caused by cheap burner tube material.

I wish I still had the pictures of the six power burner units that had holes melted through the combustion chambers.

Check the manifold pressure and make sure that there is a slight uphill pitch to the burners if this is a natural gas application. If it is LP, a slight downward pitch.

Mark H

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Gary Fereday

Noel made this point with me

boilers are made to be placed upon the floor. It has to do with the temperture and flow of the heat and surrounding air. Appliances placed upon platforms above the floor should have a large platform to make the appliance think it is upon a floor. At least 6 inches bigger than the foot print of the appliance. Maybe larger if the manufacture suggests it. This discussion came about because of platform mounted boilers that fry controls in side the jacket. I wonder if the same thing here is occuring just in another place! bibugh

Boilerpro_3

Same here...

Seen this same type of problem on the few Hydrotherms I installed. Called Hydrotherm about it and told them I was not the only one that had come across this problem. Was told they would not do anything about it. While your case may be different, poor quality material and/ or design is probably at fault. I've since dropped all of thier product lines.

Boilerpro

Joe_13

But aren't boilers mounted on cider blocks

To get them off the floor a foot or so in case of flooding? Plus some units are installed over horizontal inderect DHW tanks for space savings, probably 2 feet off the ground.
Dan should put up a product problem page you guys could flag if many of you are finding a high problem rate. I think the manufacturers would start taking action quickly if their problems were listed on The Wall.

Unknown

Blocks

Sure you can use blocks. You can use any noncombustable base material that suits the purpose.

Make sure that the platform has a solid flat top that extends well beyond the edges of the boiler.

If a boiler has a vestibule, and louvers, to keep the controls inside cool, and is up on two cement blocks, it won't draw the proper amount of cooling air over the controls. The air that feeds the burners, and then the chimney (after combustion) goes by the middle of the gas burners between the blocks, rather than over the orifices, the air shutters, and importantly, around the burners as secondary air. Combustion and pilot problems can occur.

It is explained in the installation instructions.

Noel Murdough

Slant/Fin Corp.

Unknown

Pitch on Burners???

Mark where does the pitch on burners come from? I have never heard of doing that. I always have taught that the burners should be stable in the brackets provided by the manufacturer to hold them in place. Important to remove shipping straps however at time of installation. It is even a good ides to remove them before placing the boiler in posistion, as they are tough to get after equipment is installed.

My experience when they are other wise is that we have combustion problems or sooting due to impingement on cooler surafces due to burners being out of posistion.

I am glad Noel posted about the boilers being off the floor with out proper support underneath and covering the air for combustion zone for burners. I have been preaching this for years. I have looked arounfd for years for good non combustible platforms that satisfy air for combustion requirements. Most of them literally come short of proper application. I have actually made some of my own sized to fit the particular application. Prepoured and set up before installation. But I have been known to take a lot of time on jobs getting every possible contigency covered.

A little postscript to all of this is that I find that most pressed metal burners made in the last 15 or so years have a corrosion problem. What ever happened to the good old cast iron burner? I guess I am getting old.

Stainless steel burners are a solution but tend to be expensive or not available from all manufacturers.

Steamhead

Yet another reason

to read the freakin' manual!

Good one, Noel.

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Don_4

Air flow??

Maybe you can clarify why the platform needs to be wider than the boiler? Is not more air better than not enough? I have installed many boilers on angle iron frames(custom built) which basically support the factory legs(feet) of the boiler. I have yet to have a problem with these installs, some from ten years ago.

Unknown

airflow

There is only a certain amount of air drawn through the heat exchanger (boiler)

The boiler must be designed so that the air that is drawn through the inside of the gas burners and between the gas burners can be controlled by the shape of the openings and the size of the openings. Since it has to be able to be operated on a solid pad, it is designed for that condition.

A Slant/Fin Galaxy, Sentry, Sentinel, and Victory II are all designed for a pad that extends at least 3" beyond the boiler, so that any air that flows into the boiler from the sides and rear is moving horizontally, and doesn't take away from the air available at the burner's air inlets.

These are natural draft boilers, and an open bottom is a major draft leak. You would be unable to make the gas/air ratio be the same under all conditions.

You might even soot up, but likely only make CO. This risk is not acceptable.

I cannot speak for the boiler company that this post started with, though.

I hope I explained it OK.

Noel

Don_11

Pitch on burners

I have heard about pitching the burners also, maybe from Glen Stanton. The, ever so slight, pitch is to get the gas to the end of the burners so it does not flow back into the home. You pitch LP down because it is heavier than air, natural is pitched up because it is lighter.

Unknown

Pitch on Burners????

In both cases LP or Natural gas the gas is at a pressure which injects into the burner and cause a partial vacuum in the burner head which allows air to inject into the head to mix with the gas. Unless the manufacturer at time of design puts a pitch on a burner I would not want to alter the way the burner is designed to be installled.

Here is another problem, what happens if you convert the boiler from LP to Natural gas? This is typical with some Natural Gas companies to set up equipment on LP waiting for the opportunity to run a main to an area. Now it comes time to convert to natural do we now change the pitch on the burners.

As always with what may be a new and creative procedures I am interested in knowing all about them. After 42 years in the industry I am getting old and maybe out of touch with the creative process.

As far as gas flowing back into the home that is not something that happens unless there is some kind of blockage or defect. I have converted equipment and worked on both LP and Natual gas and adjusted thousands of burners I have never heard of this. I am as always ready to learn.

I still find as posted previously that the quality of burners used on a lot of equipment leaves a lot to be desired. I believe this is the problem with a lot of the corrosion. We had corrosive problems in the past and the cast iron burners seemed to have less of a reaction to it and you could easily restore them with cleaning and some wire brushing.

[Deleted User]

About disolving burners...

I had a customer that had a house over the infamous Redfield Gun Sight TCE plume (those from Denver know about this environmental disaster...) and her boiler drew air from a hole cut into the crawl space. She went through 3 sets of burners per year for about two years prior to us getting involved. We blocked off the crawl space access and gave the boiler outside air from the roof and her burners quit disolving. I agree with Timmie Mac, it sounds like an environmental air quality issue.

I am currenlty looking at a 850,000 btu cast iron boiler that heats a large paint supply wharehouse. It too uses the pressed steel burners. The boiler sits in an out building attached to the back of the main warehouse. This was done to satisfy the insurance company that no open flame would be in the warehouse with the other flammable (thinners etc..) fluids. They used to have a 2,000 gallon underground storage tank for holding TCE solvents that they delivered in bulk. The tank sprung a leak, and went unnoticed for who knows how long and lost a lot of fluid into the ground. Guess what, the burners are GONE. I'm suprised they are even capable of sustaining ANY kind of flame in the combustion chamber. We're going to have to replace the whole boiler. Even the cast iron heat exchangers have suffered sloughing due to chemical impingement.

Our solution is to install some sealed combustion boilers and flag pole the combustion air intakes to get them away from the contaminated soil. The tanks have long since been dug up and removed, but the soil still holds a lot of residual chemicals. You can actually see streaking on the louvered combustion air intakes where the TCE has etched the galvanized steel.

Chemicals, especially VOC's and combustion process do not mix well.

ME

Steve Ebels_2

Hydrotherm

Every last one that I have ever serviced with that model burner has looked just like that. Doesn't make a difference where it was installed or what chemicals were or weren't in the air. They all grow holes in the burner tubes.

Just a note about cement blocks from another post on this thread. I was called to look at one that the HO said, and I quote, "There might be a problem with my boiler. I'd like you to look at it sometime when you're out this way." What I found was an HC-100 hanging, literally, from the piping. The floor was MIA under the boiler. The installer had set the boiler on 1" thick patio blocks, thinking to himself, " I don't need no stinkin' $50 combustible floor base. I'll just set it on these blocks. Cement doesn't burn ya-know." Well the blocks didn't burn but they transfered enough heat through to the wood floor that it did!! I slid into the crawlspace and there was a blackened, chared area the exact size of the patio block base he had made. The HO indicated that he had smelled something "hot" in the house on occasion but had never pinpointed the source of the odor. I don't think he realizes to this day how close his house was to burning down.

Dale

Slotted port burner

Are there any batteries being chaged nearby? Garages are often more damp than a comparable basement. Also, where is the combustion air coming from? Is it a confined space with the doors closed. That failure happens alot, very common with the 2 year old Rheem unints of 10 years ago. The ones using inside air failed quickly the ones using outside air lasted alot longer, The more oversize the unit the quicker they failed, long wet time is really hard on these burners.

Dale

An old post

Sometime ago a post caught my eye that concerned pilot outage problems caused by not putting the boiler on blocks, the radiant heat off the floor caused the tcouple cold junction to get too hot and drop out the pilot, of course it only happened when it ran for quite awhile. As the other post said read the directions. Weil McClain has a good floor kit drawing with their older boilers, basically bricks wired together with a sheet metal top, always seems to work fine.

Matt K.

Burner Tubes

This burner problem is not specific to Hydrotherm boilers. I have seen various manufacturer's burner tubes experience the same problems. A lot of the manufacturer's have switched over to stainless steel burners and have just about eliminated any of these issues.