Water Chemistry? - Steam Boilers Failing

Bryan Janton

Getting a high occurance of cast iron failure on gas steam boilers. Leak is developing on the fire side of the casting leak is going unnoticed because it is venting with the flue gasses. Boiler reps are blaming too much make up water. // We previously encountered this with Burnham gas steam boilers but had good results with adding "SURGEMASTER" to those systems and preventing failure of the metal.
The newest occurances are all Utica Boilers (3 PEG residential boilers, 1 commercial) Most of these boilers have been treated with Surgemaster since installation or as soon as owners hired us to work on them.
All affected boilers are in the same municipal water source, and the water department employee have shared they are following a federal guidline of water treatment to clean up the water mains.
Mostly wondering if anyone has encountered similar problems. Water samples are being collected for testing.

oil-2-4-6-gas

depending on the size of the boiler --if they are a modulating burner --you should install low fire hold aquastats to stay on low-fire until it reaches a decent temp. before they go to high fire ---i have seen too many oversized overfired boilers --run to high fire from a cold start --its not long before they start to leak -when your water quality tests come back you will know better on that end --any meters to figure you fresh water intake ??

Jim_64

possible cholrides

I have heard that high cholrides in water can cause water line and above water line failures due to despoits of cholrides building up and forming hot spots on the casting and failure ,i have seen a few myself and the pins on the combustion sides where broken hope this helps clammy

Bryan Janton

No meters to measure make up water. Yet... All boilers are single stage, steam only boilers, no tankless coils for domestic water. Thanks Bryan

JackR

Municiple or Well Water?

I have had several over the last few years myself and I have to say at first I was blaming Burnham because the first few I saw were Burnham, I know must say that I have to apologize to Burnham because it is happening on everything. The boys at Burnham had been talking Chlorides and Excessive water make-up as the problem and I was very reluctant to believe them. I have now seen the proof in the pudding, I have added Hydrolevel VXT feeders to every job and also put them on the replacement boilers and was amazed at some of the amounts of water used. The second thing I really pay attention to now is the Chloride count in the ground water, every steam boiler on a well that has failed had chloride counts off the charts. I have switched all of my oil steam boilers back to Burnham with the Megasteam which was designed to be resistant to these conditions, I also switched back to the Burnham Gas also, I felt I owed it to them since I at first was quick to throw them under the bus. I suggest you get in touch with your local Burnham rep and he will explain the whole Chloride/Oxygen Corrosion issue or get in touch with Glenn Stanton from Burnham who is the Tech guy and Aces in my book.