exploding weil-mclain boilers

[Deleted User]

My company has been using weil-mclain boilers for 30 years.  Throughout the course of the last 5 years there have been episodes of the boiler making a loud exploding noise.  In turn causing all the burner tubes to fall on the floor.  The explosion is quite violent.  It usually occurs within a half hour of start up.   We buy all knockdown steam boilers and assemble the boiler as we need.  In the packing they give you furnace cement, or retart cement its called.  My boss believes thats what is causing this violent explosion.  We put this around the flue collector.  I dont see how its possible for this stuff to explode its rated up to 3000 degrees.  The rep denies any responsibilty.  Just curious if this has happened to anybody else.  Or what your thoughts maybe.  Thanks

TonyS

Exploding furnaces

I can tell you of something similar in our area at a certain development. When it gets really cold, propane is sometimes added to the natural gas mains to supplement strong demand, this is always reflected in the gas customers bill because the propane has less btus. When this occurs the propane sometimes likes to find low mains in the street being heavier than natural gas. One development is really prone to this and many a furnace door has blown off in winter in this development due to this.

Big Ed_4

Who...

... Would be liable???

TonyS

I would imagine they are

I use to do a lot of subcontracting for The local gas company, going back 15 years now. Also Ed, if I recollect correctly, at that time they were injecting butane into the mains, which was worse than propane, also back then none of the units had inducers on and were strictly atmospheric which probably added to the problem.

Tom Blackwell_2

Propane-air

The Atlanta area used to use propane/air for a supplement before they built the LNG storage facilities. During this period there were quite a few delayed lightoff mishaps, and a friend had his house burn when the water heater exploded. The mixers use air to mix with the propane so that the mixture is blended down from propane's 2500 btu/cf energy content to 1000 btu/cf. The problem comes when the mixtire is a little off, and this causes an appliance that is on the outside range of acceptable set-ups to fail to light off immediately. Who is liable? Well, the supplier is a regulated utility and has no liability unless gross negligence can be proven-good luck with that. With today's monitoring systems, the likelyhood of being very far off in mixture is less likely than 30 years ago.

TonyS

Tom

Maybe you can answer this? As you stated, propane has over twice the BTU,s of natural gas per cubic foot but is less per pound. Is the measurement of a cubic foot done at the same pressure or is that based on propane delivery at 11-13 inches W.C. and Natural at 3-1/2 inches W.C. or is that measurement taken on both at atmospheric. Its been a while but for some reason I recall a price decrease when propane was injected, but I could be wrong.

Tom Blackwell_2

Standard Pressure

The btu/cf measurements are made at standard temperature and pressure. 60 degrees F. and 29.97 inches of mercury absolute. Propane/air is supposed to be indistinguishable from natural gas.