Excessive make-up water

Mark N

My boiler is a Burnham IN-4 in the manual it states that if you have to add more than 0.1 gallons a month it is excessive. The manuals for the Burnham Megasteam and the V8 state you can add up to 6 gallons a month before it is excessive. Why would a oil boiler be able to take on so much more water than a gas boiler.

Mark

clammy

one difference

One difference is the v 8 and the mega are wet based design while the other is a dry base design ,i do believe that the less water stated may be a typo error ,but on a burmham gas dry base i service took about 8 gallons in a whole season ,get a hydrolevel svt feeder it has a pretty acurate feed water recorder with out it you will never know how much make up water your boiler is taking and how much your losing.Lose to much and you'll be replacing your boiler espically if you have buried returns peace and good luck clammy

mark n_3

Thanks. I have a unimatch. Is the Hydrolevel a direct replacement.

Mark

clammy

chk hygrolevel

Check on hydro level website ,they give a list and wiring diagrams for most other manafactures probe type low water cut offs and exactly how they are to be wired ,i like the svt feeder but am not to big a fan of there cycle guard lwco it seems to do a self test every 10 to 15 minutes due to the low water content of most smaller residental steam boiler ,it seems to leand itself to shuting the unit off before it really gets steaming and it seems to me that it takes a few cycles before the boiler really start delivering heat to the rads espically if it's a larger system but on smaller systems it's not to much of a issue but i still really don't dig the cycleguard lwco ,i would rather the boiler runs until the pressuretrol or t/stat are satisfied but being that there are many variables in the field espically on steam systems i would guess it covers alot of bases and cover boiler manafacture a$$ a lit bit better due to probe and cleaness of boiler water bettre self testing then failure and boiler damage ,peace and good luck clammy