Oil Boiler Shut Down In Middle of Heating

EKDatDKE

Hey everyone,

Had a quick question from a new steam heat home owner.  I woke up at 5AM this morning to hit the gym and as I walk down stairs in the middle of heating I heard my boiler stop in the middle of heating.  We keep the house cold in the middle of the night and then turn up to 68 during the day and have the electric thermostat to kick on at 4:30AM so my wife and I can be warm when we get up for work/gym.  It made it to 66 degrees then stopped.  I went downstairs and I thought maybe the lower water trigger had been hit so I tried resetting the system.  The water level seemed fine, but I had no idea why it would be not on.  The reset button wasn't triggered and about 2 minutes later it went back on again.  I have never experienced this.  Does the boiler have a thermostat inside to prevent it from getting too hot?  I have had it serviced twice recently and never had an issue.  I don't ever pay attention to this, so it is possible this has been happening already. And all of us Northeasterners know it has been brutally cold the last couple of days!  Thanks!!  The boiler is from the early 1940's and is made of iron.

Mike Kusiak_2

Pressuretrol

It sounds like your system may have shut down on pressure. There is a device on your boiler that senses pressure and shuts down the boiler when the preset steam pressure is reached. Since you had the heat shut down overnight, when the thermostat was raised to 68, the boiler had to run for a long time and may have reached the preset pressure limit. If this is what ocurred, it is perfectly normal, and actually indicates that your system is working properly.



The next time it happens, look at the pressure gauge on the boiler and see if there is any indication. When the pressure drops to near zero, the burner should come on again

Jamie Hall

I'm with Mike

on this -- your boiler almost certainly shut down on pressure, particularly if it came back on in a minute or two.  Perfectly normal on a long run -- such as coming out of a night setback.  In fact, you want it to do that; once the pressure starts to rise in a steam heat system beyond a certain point (typically one to two pounds per square inch) additional pressure just means you've burned additional fuel (money) and produces no useful heat at all.



That said, though, if you have the usual (and code required) 0 - 30 psi gauge, it's unlikely that you will see any significant movement on the pressure gauge while it's doing this.  You might, if you got lucky and have a sensitive gauge, but those gauges usually just don't register much at the actual operating pressure in the system.

EKDatDKE

Thanks!

Thanks everyone.  Was just sort of suprised this morning, but it makes sense!!!