American Standard Series 4B-J3

David DeFord_3

I am looking at purchasing a 10 unit Apartment Building with an American Standard 4B-J3 natural gas fired boiler. I was able to get the following information from the placard on the boiler:

American Standard
Input: 450,000
Output 360,000
Sq. Ft. steam 1125
Series 4B-J3

My questions are:
1. Are there any known issues with this boiler? It appears to have been made in 1972 and should have been inspected every 3 years by the state.
2. Does anyone know of someone in the Detroit area that can service this boiler?
3. Is it possible to fit an auto-feed to this boiler? I am aware of the issues with an auto-feed on a boiler and am willing to accept the flooding risk.

I won't have access to the Internet for about two weeks due to work commitments but I will certainly check back when I can so if you ask a question and don't get an answer I am not ignoring you.

Steamhead (in transit)

The 4B-J3

is probably a production code of some kind. I remember running into it on different A-S boilers. The actual model number is different from this. We'd need the actual model number of the boiler to know exactly what you have.

If this is an atmospheric gas boiler, it's well-built but there are more-efficient steam boilers out there now. Yes, you can have an auto-feed added- I would recommend using the Hydrolevel VXT series since it tells you how much water it adds.

Any good steam-heating company should be able to service this unit. It should have a digital combustion test once a year to make sure it's not making Carbon Monoxide (this is true of ALL heating equipment). If the company you talk to doesn't do this type of test, find someone else.

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