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Well guys, it seems a frickin' miracle has occurred here overnight. I was awakened in the early hours today to some of the more reassuring sounds my system has made over the years and the sense (from under the covers) that a decent amount of heat was coming from my bedroom radiator. I came downstairs to comfortable warmth along the way. And after setting the (electric) tea kettle to boil I headed to the basement boiler room to find my recalcintrant wee beasty sitting quietly at completion of the call for heat with the sight glass level precisely at my Sharpie mark of NWL. Mind you an inch below where I left it but a clear sign from the boiler deities.

I climbed back upstairs to check my problematic living room baseboards. Strains of The Hallelujah Chorus echoing in my head as all five checked out toasty warm from end to end, including #4 (the long one) that had simply coughed a few times when I opened the steam trap at its end during a heat call the day before, and pulled out the trap element, fully expecting or maybe just hoping steam would come rushing to the opening? Maybe? Sorry, cough, gurgle, gurgle ... looking for something here?

After a cup of coffee and a little breakfast the tstat was calling for heat so I went downstairs to witness the miracle it action. The boiler temp came up nicely, with pressure building to about 8 inches WC at start of steaming. It climbed a bit above 16 inches in the early mid cycle, then fell back to 10 to 12-ish as cold condensate began to return to the boiler. Best of all, the sight glass level remained firmly in the +1 to +1.5 inch area the entire time, until the CycleGard threw in it's random "intermittent level test" sending us into vacuum for a brief minute. Once steaming again level came right back to +1. Like I said, a freakin' meer-kle.

Okay, so before we call the Vatican for insights on how my demon-possessed new boiler, regularly spewing it's charge from both ends days before, had suddenly become a docile and a well-behaved heating appliance, I should fess up to two changes I made last night, before settling into the couch with the Missus, for reruns of Uhtred, son of Uhtred, season 2. The first was to move the old Hoffmann 75 sitting atop my condensate system doing nothing but helping to tune the hiss of escaping air, over to steam tail #2, where it might actually do some good. Secondly, after contemplating Paul's admonishment to not worry about adding 8-way until all the oil was cleaned out, it occurred to me that I still had a partial quart of Hercules Boiler Cleaner, which i had used with the old Burham when it sounded a bit too rumbly. So I quickly perused the instructions: "Removes oil, scale, sludge" hmmm well not a lot of scale or sludge yet I assume, "emulsifies oil and grease", that sounds good, "helps stop priming, foaming, and surging", okay I am in. I grabbed my channel locks to open the pipe-bombed shaped chem add port my boiler guy had provided, added a precisely metered 2 1/2 to 3 glugs of the fluorescent green elixir straight into the port, and closed her up. Off to Uhtred.

The rest is, as they say, for the history books. Shout it from the rooftops, "This **** really works! All hail Hercules Boiler Cleaner!"

@HVACNUT yes these sections were pretty big.

we normally haul all the metal stuff back to our shop, and then hand it over to our Scrap guy.

This was a unique situation, larger than average rip out for us.

This job is going directly to the scrap yard. we don’t have time to hand it over to the Scrap guy, it’s coming off our truck just once- the Scrap guy will lead our help load it into his truck.

Plus, I’m dying see what the weight is, I’m gonna guess 2200 pounds

we packed everything in the pick up truck minus the front section. We did haul it outside, but the pick up truck was starting to sag. We probably should not have loaded those water heaters, oh well