Clogged and cracked section

SpeedCity

This is a 3 year old Burnham V1116 cast sectional steam boiler. The middle section developed a leak. We were called and found it cracked and plugged. Owner says he fixed a leak in the condensate return in the first year. No water meter, very old building. Two pipe, someone in the past removed a vacuum pump and installed a condensate pump which would overflow from time to time. Their engineer says this looks like sediment returned from the old pipes in the building. I said it looked like scale from make up water. Any suggestions whose right and what can be done to prevent this? The local rep said he had never seen one so clogged solid. The last three pictures are from the bottom corner of the cracked section cut away.

Unknown

Boiler Problems

Wow! That's nasty!  After looking at your pictures, the immediate thought I had was you might want to contact Rhomar,

Rhomar Water Management       http://www.rhomarwater.com/

They deal with both residential and commercial boilers. They're nice guys to work with and very helpful.

- Rod

clammy

combination of causes

It looks like a bit of both mud and make up i would think that maybe the combination of sediment in the returns and a leak in the wet return helped bring all that great stuff back to log those mud passes on the boiler.Every time i have seen a boiler go from to much make up water it seemed the inside of the setions espically the bottom push nipples where clean except the inside of the setion where bright orange from all the fresh water eating and rusting the cast ,as for boilers that  crack from dry firing from mud blocking and isolating the sections it always seemed that the entrire inteoir of the boilers setion where coated in mud and that there was not alot of evidence of make up water (not alot of rusty water when drain and dismantling )To narrow down the issues on the replaement boiler install a hydrolevel svt water feeded and set her up for a minuin water flow rate when calling for water hope this helped peace and good luck clammy 

SpeedCity

Cracked

Thanks for the feedback. That Hydrolevel product is a great suggestion. I already have a water meter ordered for this repair but will keep that XVT feeder in mind for the future. There was a large leak in the condensate return that the owner fixed in the first year (this is a Catholic High School) and they find hard to believe that this happened so quickly. On-site maintenance was blowing down the bottom of the boiler monthly till water ran clear but obviously that did not expose the clog deep within. With the repair they are adding a feed tank to try and isolate the mud away from the boiler.

TomM

dissolve in acid

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you could take a chunk, and place it in hydrochloric acid (muriatic).  If it is scale, (calcium carbonate/magnesium carbonate) then it will dissolve.   If it doesn't dissolve, its iron mud.  Either way, you will be able to visualize the concentrations of scale to mud depending on how much dissolves and how much doesn't. 

CaCO3(s) + 2HCl(aq) --> CaCl2(aq) + CO2(g) + H2O(l)

-Tom in Conshohocken Pa

SpeedCity

Acid idea

Thats a great idea....I'll post what happens.