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This guy isn't my relative but is my Girl Friends relative. So, I've got sucked into looking at his steamer ….again. I hate doing anything for this guy because it's like pulling teeth to get money out of him even for parts.

46 year old Dunkirk boiler oil fired Beckett AF with a tankless. In the past 8 years or so I have replaced the gauge glass and gg valves 1 trip, cleaned out a plugged pigtail 1 trip, replace the pressure control 1 trip and he tried to replace the cad cell control himself after he screwed up the wiring, I had to go fix that.

Now his house is falling apart. They fix nothing unless it breaks completely. They had mold issues because the roof leaked so bad, but they waited 10 years too late to fix that.

It's actually a rugged little boiler and if it had any maintenance, it would probably run forever but like many he buys oil from the cheapest place in town with no service dept. I have bitched him out for that already.

So you get the idea. They are constantly going on trips to FLA, cruises etc they both work so they got some money coming in, have 2 new cars and a huge flat screen TV…..you got the picture?

got a 550 underground tank and the boiler piping is all wrong, no header and no Hartford but the thing runs as quiet as a mouse and heats well…..go figure. Piping all covered in asbestos

Back when I was actually working, I said "lets rip this out and go to gas your going to have to deal with the oil tank someday, it will cost more the longer you wait". He said " the gas is in the street, but my wife is scared of gas.

Get this, when she needs gas put in her car, she has him take it to the gas station and fill it she won't do it.

So now it's Christmas and the outdoor temp here is 9 degrees. The wife has cats (which I am allergic to and can't stand) so they went to FLA…again for Xmas and to go on a cruise for their 40th anniversary. She has a woman that goes over to feed the cats and checks the boiler.

Today there calling me because there is no heat and the boiler is flooded. T stat set at 70 but the house was 48. The cat survived.

I never had this issue before. I checked the hand valve that feeds the boiler thinking the cat lady over filled it or didn't close the globe valve tight, but it was shut tight.

So I said well either the tankless coil has a hole in it or the hand valve is leaking by. So I started draining. There was so much water in the system the burner was off on pressure.

No place to drain water in the basement so I lugged 25 gallons up the cellar stairs before the water showed up in the sight glass. But the sight glass filled up fast, I drained again, and it filled up fast, I drained it again and it filled some but started to slow down. So, now I am scratching my head.

So the burner came on when the pressure dropped. Since they are not home anyhow, I valved off the tankless. Watched it run for a while and left.

Then after I got home and was trying to get to sleep I figured part of it out.

I suspect the two returns that drop down and ty together before going in the boiler are filled with sludge. When I drained the boiler to the sight glass level, and it refilled a couple of times it was water in the over filled returns seeping through the sludge. The returns are overhead.

But that does not explain the original flooding. Have to go back tomorrow and check. If it is gaining water the hand valve is leaking by because I shut the tankless off.

If it's the tankless is the issue I will suggest abandoning it, I am sure the bolts will never come out and that's not a winter job on a 46 yo boiler. Cap the tankless pipes and put in an electric water heater to get by till summer……..But summer of what year??

I am not going to do a tankless coil, a water heater or the boiler…..I'm done.

Sorry for the rant but I couldn't sleep.

Hi. I recently purchased a one-story, slab home, built in 2010, in the Atlanta metro area. They originally built the home with the plumbing in the concrete slab, but there was a flaw in many of the homes in the area, which caused the pipes to fail with catastrophic flooding. The fix was to re-route all the plumbing through the attic. This is an open floor plan with the gas furnace in the attic, so the attic areas over the living spaces are very well insulated. The areas over the non-living areas, such as the garage, are uninsulated. The re-routed pipes in the attic are PEX pipes with standard foam pipe insulation around them. The pipes over the heated spaces disappear into the insultation. But the pipes, with foam insulation around them over the garage, are essentially just exposed. See pictures.

The Atlanta airport last night and this morning reported the following hourly temperatures 11pm to 11am this morning - 32,31,29,28,28,27,26,25,24,24,26,30,39. Last night, I put a remote temperature sensor near the farthest pipe above the unheated garage, closest to outer wall. At 6am this morning, the outside temperature was 29, the garage temperature was 48 and the lowest temperature during the night the remote temperature sensor recorded near the pipe in the unheated attic above the garage was 32. How long the freezing temperatures lasted in my attic above the garage, I don't know, it just records the lowest temperature encountered (the remote sensor is shown in the first picture below).

While cold spells like this in the Atlanta area aren't common, they do happen, and it has been known to go down into the teens with howling winds.

I do the normal types of things when it gets colder such as let pipes drip, open cabinets, etc. However, the recent cold front blew in while we were away, and we couldn't do anything more than crank up the heat in the house using a remote thermostat.

As I am a cost conscious, belt-and-suspenders kind of guy, I think I'd like to do something to try to get ahead of a potential frozen pipe problem. I am thinking of the following fixes…

1. Electric heat tape around the pipes. To me, as a DIY guy, this looks like a lot of work and a real pain to do as I have lots of pipes running all over the place in the attic space. And, I'd have to work around the current foam pipe insulation.
2. As I have the furnace in the attic, open up a vent in the attic ductwork to vent hot air into the attic space. Probably not a really efficient solution and if the living space is warm and the uninsulated attic isn't then I might be sweltering just to get the attic a couple of degrees warmer.
3. As I have power in the attic, buy a $40+ radiant heater (not an electrical resistance heater) at one of the big box stores, set the thermostat on it at 40 degrees and be done with it.

I like option #3 the best, but I don't know if I have missed any other options or if #3 is practical and will get job done.

Any guidance is most welcome. Thank you!

Ideally the boiler should be its own room — doesn't have to be fancy or all that tight, but still — if you are going to use a fan in a can (or any other approach to outside combustion air except for direct ducting). Then run it when the boiler is running (it must be interlocked). Do you need a damper in such a situation? I'd be inclined to say not really — probably more hassle than it's worth.

@ratio. I tap 24 vac power from one of the Taco board transformers and covert that line to 12dc to run 5mm LEDs cause my old eyes can't see the tiny Taco board LEDs.

The power supply pictures in the drawing is an old Radioshack 13.8 vdc 19a power supply that is no longer made. It died a few years ago and I've since replaced it with, as you say, an off brand "****" 12vdc power supply from Amazon. 😉

I drew it with Microsoft Visio drawing program.

Hope that helps.