boiler water conservation

nicholas bonham-carter

every time i blow down my lwco, i see that about 2 gallons of water have been wasted. maybe someone can come up with some way to avoid loosing all this water once a week.

maybe the tail piece of the lwco can be piped into the return with some sort of mud trap, which could be flushed once during the heating season. during the rest of the time the rusty debris would just fall down from the float chamber of the lwco into the mud trap.--nbc

Rod

How to Save Water

LOL-  An easy solution, switch to a probe type LWCO!  Sorry NBC, I couldn't resist

- Rod

conversiontime

weekly too much?

I tend to only blow the lwco once a month during the season b/c I suspect weekly fresh/corrosive water blowdown will reduce boiler life significantly. I know this has been discussed before, but weekly lwco blowdown seems to be overkill designed more for lwco manufacturer liability than valid boiler maintenance.

crash2009

Yea,

 I also hate to see all that "Pure" water going to waste.  I heard a rumor the other day that Steamhead has a whole backyard full of condensate tanks that he has removed from one-pipe steam systems  

nicholas bonham-carter

Paranoid about dry-firing

There is a certain comfort in seeing the burner cut out when draining the lwco.

In 1970, on a month old boiler, the LWCO had been modified by the installer to " make it less sensitive " to an unstable waterline, brought on by over-pressure, and some horiizontal pipes in the returns which caused the water to hide. The result was a dry-firing early new years day, during a cold snap. We were without heat for 10 days, while the sections were replaced. I keept alll the taps and toilets running to keep them from freezing, and only lost one radiator to freezing.

The probe type LWCO can be checked, but not as completely as the float type, and this peerless came with one of each.--NBC