Gas Boiler

Ken D.

I have de-rated units many times over the years, mostly on warm air furnaces. I have occasionally de-rated a boiler but not by much. Remove 1 or 2 burners and orafices and replace with a pipe plug.I have had no ill effects, although it is possible to have some if you are not careful.

Bob Forand

Gas Boiler

I had a contractor ask me a question and I didn't know how to answer him. So please help me to answer the question. The HO has a gas boiler that is grossly oversized for their house. The contractor suggested plugging one of the gas venturi on the gas train, he is thinking that this will take one of the sections out of the boiler so to speak. Has anyone ever tried something like this ? What are the downfalls.

Roy Scott

old boiler

We had a large American Standard gas boiler, 1954 vintage, 1,250,000 btu/hr (+ or -), 14 section, with 12 underside "gravity" burners. It stood about 6 feet high, 5 feet wide by 10 feet long. The boiler was fed with a 2-1/2 (two and a half inch) pipe size gas main. When ever our boiler turned on the entire sales force at the gas company used to stand up at their desks and cheer for 20 minutes. Temperature control was the high tech method of ..."If you are too hot just open a window !". The system usually ran under vacuum (less than 1 psi since our system has a vac pump) but in real cold weather we would crank that thing up to 4-6 psi., .... this was all before we ran across this website & we did not know how double dumb squared that was. About 6 years ago we discovered steam hissing from one of the boiler sections. We rigged up a crude patch job to stop the cast iron section steam leak. We were afraid the Permatex/gasket patch would be burnt with the gas burners just 36" below so we closed the gas cocks to 3 of the 12 burners, removed the burners, and permanetly shut one of the 4 continuosly running pilot lights. We could still reach 6 psi, our tenants still controlled their comfort by opening windows and the sales force still cheered. If you have an old style steam boiler system, ... they all seem to be "oversized". If a system is "oversized" you can do all kinds of wasteful, hurtful, damaging, stupid things to the system & it will contine to heat like a banchee. Just make sure you have a big wallet to pay for such acts, ... however, unlike us, sounds like your "downsizing" is a wise, reasonable & safe approach. To answer your original question, ... yes, we removed 3 or 12 burners, left all of the cast iron sections as they were and ran fine for 6 years. If you are a purest, you may have to watch for soot buildup due to the incorrect burning between sections but the gas savings can more than pay an additional furnace cleaning.

Roy Scott

old boiler - typo

To answer your original question, ... yes, we removed 3 or 12 burners,>>>>>>>>>should read "removed 3 of 12"

mark smith

you are a sadly misguided

Roy Scott

sadly misguided ???

"Sadly Misguided" as in life ???, ...as in space ???, ... regarding dropping the burners ??? Was that a legit comment or what?