Best Of

Suppliers tend to recommend their local contractor customers because that’s good for the supplier’s business. But consider this: The local contractor sent you an untrained worker who thinks you have to manually vent a steam system. If the contractor is that good he would never send you someone who would say (and believe) that.

Hire the knowledgeable contractor. He will do it once, and do it right. Knowledge is worth more than geography.

the 2 miles between my house and the expressway is 30 minutes most of the time.

but go with the person that knows what they are doing, it is easy to get steam wrong if you don't understand it and it will never work right until you re-do the parts that are wrong. if something breaks and there isn't water on the floor, those repairs are much easier than piping a new boiler correctly.

I like and appreciate that @ethicalpaul is doing it since no one else is (that I know of).

In 1968ish the F P Young company started adding a chemical they purchased from a company in New England called APC 30. It was one part of a program they purchased from Henry Blanchard, or a company Henry worked for or operated that promoted clean burning oil heat. I remember that Henry preached that oil can burn clean (even before Flame Retention oil burners) and you needed to start with clean oil in the tank. The APC 30 was a magical chemical that cleaned the tank just by delivering it to the tank in each oil fill up. That is how I remember it.  I also remember that you could do an oil burner tune up and vacuum cleaning in a white work shirt.  Well that may not have been the best idea but it worked on all the regular customers.  (Not so much on customers from other oil suppliers that switched to FP Young).  

So some fuel has additives based on where you purchase the fuel. I remember driving the oil truck and when I needed to load at a different bulk plant I would need to add a one gallon container (in reusable metal cans) of APC 30 to the truck before filling up the truck.

There was one down side to this. For the first two years we could expect an increase in very dirty oil filters and an occasional plugged nozzle as the chemical scrubbed the dirt from the homeowner's oil tank. That was before I started burner service work. By the time 1975 rolled around, all the FP Young co. customers' fuel tanks were so clean that plugged filters, strainers, and nozzles were a thing of the past. 

My friend and oil company owner from Cape May always sold fuel from Atlantic Richfield, then it became ARCO.  That fuel had a good quality additive and when Atlantic stopped selling to him directly and he purchased form the open market, He was able to use the additive to keep his customers fuel quality up the the standards his grandfather sold for over 50 years.  

When he purchased a competitor;s fuel deliver business he found that their customers tanks were so dirty that they had a policy of calling most of the automatic delivery accounts to ask them to shut off the burner switch because the delivery would always stir up the sludge and cause a no heat call for the next day from a plugged filter or nozzle.  

They also had a policy of lifting top feed fuel lines a few inches higher from the bottom to avoid the tank bottom sludge.  This plays havoc with automatic delivery accounts with 275 gallon fuel tanks that run empty with 7” of fuel still in the bottom. According to the degree day calculation there was still enough in the tank for a delivery that was scheduled for tomorrow.  The started to tell the degree day calculator that the tanks were 225 gallon capacity in order to prevent “out of oil” emergency deliveries.  I needed to carry 10 gallons of fuel oil on my service truck for that reason. 

There I go rambling on about old times.

I guess I could have just said YES there is a difference, but it all comes from the same place. What you add to the fuel makes the difference. … but that would just be boring

Mr. Ed

Well I like @ethicalpaul 's experiments. When you troubleshoot a piping problem don't you wish you could see what is happening inside the pipe? This is something @DanHolohan has always mentioned and I think of it often.

With Paul's experiments you get to see inside the pipe. You get to open and close valve to see velocity increases etc. You get to see water back up in the return.

You don't have to like it and you don't have to watch it but it is something different. Does his boiler replicate some of the crap in the field that has been neglected, piped wrong or seldom serviced. No.

It still has a lot of value IMHO.

@ethicalpaul you don’t have to create the exact conditions of my system for me to appreciate and learn from your experiments. Love your perspective and creativity, don’t stop!

Laddie, we deal with these issues and many others all the time. A little wandering in the weeds isn't going to interfere with that, and if you don't care for it, you don't have to read it.

You have a problem with your system just ask.

ISTR Smith has never specified if or how welded headers should be installed. But whoever did that work clearly doesn't know steam.