Starting up steam Boiler w/out electricity?

George_36

Hello.  I never thought about this until the recent hurricane? 

Is there anyway to start up a one pipe steam heat boiler if the electricity goes out? I have natural gas.  I have a Weil McClain boiler. It is about 30 years old.

Thanks

  

fixitguy

Sure!

Just rip out the pilot mechanism, 24 volt damper & gas valve, and replace it with millivolt parts! Retro perhaps, but it works great!

George_36

Starting up steam Boiler w/out electricity?

 Is that a temporary measure, only if the power goes out?

One the power is back on, do you need to reinstall pilot, damper and gas valve?

fixitguy

Nope

That is the way all boilers were 50 or so years ago. they don't come from the factory that way because of modern efficiency ratings and gas codes for double seated valves, but you can retrofit your own boiler that way, although we aren't supposed to say so.

George_36

Ok,

 if I were to do this, would I start the boiler by placing a lighter where the flame is and it will start up?  I am guessing it will not affect the thermostat controlling the boiler when the power is back on.   Will it affect the LWCO?  Is there anything else I need to know if I start the boiler this way? Any safety issues?  Thanks for your help.

Ironman

Danger! Don't Try That!

Unless you are a QUALIFIED gas servicer, you should not attempted to do any thing to the boiler. A no heat situation may be uncomfortable, but it beats a no life situation anytime.



fixitguy,



You need to be much more careful about throwing advice out, especially modifying a gas train, to untrained people who ask advice here. You could become responsible for someone's death or injury. Your comments are irresponsible. I think you already know that: "but you can retrofit your own boiler that way, although we aren't supposed to say so."

George_36

I would

not  do this on my own.  I would have contacted a steam heat pro to do this. I am asking just to be informed.

Thanks for your posts.

Hap_Hazzard

Good luck.

They will tell you "no."



They haven't manufactured controls like this in over 30 years, so they would have to find a used one in working condition. Is that something your average heating pro is likely to do?



Then, in order to support you, he'd have to stock every replacement part that could possibly fail in your system, and since hardly anyone else uses them, he would need to carry that inventory just for you. Is that something your average heating pro is likely to do?



Due to the rarity of these systems, it's increasingly hard to find replacement parts, and they have to be special ordered, so if your heating pro didn't stock them, you could be down for days if anything ever went wrong, so it wouldn't even take a power outage to leave you without heat for days on end in the dead of winter.



Still sound like a good idea?

crash2009

Why can't

you just use a generator?

George_36

Generator

does sound like a better idea. I was looking for another solution because if the power outage lasts more than 7 days and there is difficulty finding gas then you still won't have heat. 

Thank you all for your informative posts.

Hap_Hazzard

Run the generator on natural gas or propane.

I assume you're not heating on oil, because they require power for the burner, which means you're using either natural gas or propane. A residential standby generator will run on either, and you never have to fill it up or worry about how old the fuel is or whether the gas stations are open. As long as there's fuel for the furnace, you'll have fuel for the generator. Not only that, but even an entry level standby generator is usually enough to run your refrigerator and a microwave. As long as yo don't need to turn every light on or run an air conditioner, you can be pretty comfortable for weeks.

jumper

we're going backwards

Thirty years ago there were boilers with atmospheric burners that could be operated during power outage. So any building with gravity return steam, or gravity hot water circulation, had heat.



It seems to me that people in power are always making things too complicated. Take that NYC hospital whose emergency generator failed. How many strict codes were satisfied ?

ChrisJ

Depends

Jumper, you do realize there is a reason they switched to double seated valves and it wasn't because it was cheaper or made companies more profit.



I considered buying a small $40 kensington 12V to 120V inverter to run my boiler from a 12v car battery, problem is it still wouldn't solve my refrigerator problems so a generator is still the answer in the end. 

ryanr256

Baby it's cold outside

If it's cold enough for the boiler, there's no need for a 'fridge. Just put the food outside.



I've got a 24 volt system and if the need arises, I'm planning on running it from a battery and inverter. Or, wiring up two 12v car batteries to give the required 24 volts.



-Bob

ChrisJ

24 volts

I was under the impression it requires 24V AC which you cannot get without building or buying an inverter?



Will the gas valve operate safely on DC?

BobC

120v

A lot of the probe type LWCO need 120v applied to run the electronics, the transformer inside that sometimes supplies the 24v for the gas valve. If you have a float LWCO they usually put a transformer on the boiler for the gas valve.



I don't know if those valves will run on DC but be warned that applying DC to a coil meant to work on AC will let the smoke out - and then your really screwed.



Bob

Hap_Hazzard

Controls

Most controls are available in both 120v and 24v. I have a Hydrolevel CycleGard LWCO and VXT water feeder, and both are 24 volt.



You are absolutely right about the AC requirement. Everything--electronic controls, gas valves, damper motors--requires AC.

Hap_Hazzard

Good plan.

If you take your two batteries and reverse the polarity about 60 times a second that might just work. It won't be easy to switch the jumper cables around that fast, but with a little practice, you just might be able to do it. Of course, this will keep you pretty busy, so you'll have to get someone else to take the food out of your refrigerator and stack it outside.

;-) ;-)

George_36

I did not know

about using an inverter to work the boiler during a power outage. It makes more sense than spending thousand of dollars on a standby generator and you don't have to search for gas if you have a portable generator.

Yes, I use natural gas.  When I first saw the remark abut a $40 kensington 12V to 120V inverter to run the boiler I checked online but most were usb ports for computers?

Can anyone recommend a specific inverter to keep a steam heat boiler working? Do you need to run the car engine continuously while the boiler is working from the inverter?

Can you also explain if there is another way to run the boiler without running the engine? Thanks

SWEI

measure first

You need to know the power requirements for you boiler before you buy anything.  Most low cost inverters these days are relatively efficient at converting DC to AC, but many have a relatively high idle current.  Translation:  They may be 97% efficient when delivering 500 Watts, but less than 50% efficient when delivering only 40 Watts.  You need enough batteries to run the system while discharging them 70% or less.  We can help you design this if you can provide the load info.

ryanr256

24v AC????

Wow, looks like I'll have to revise my plan. Glad I read this thread. The good thing is we have a huge fireplace that we can use in case of emergency. The boiler isn't a necessity.



Thanks for the pointers guys.



-Bob

SteamPunkd

New Yorker CGS-A Series

I have not ruled out a gas powered generator but I would like to get a bit more knowledge on how to get the appropriate equipment to do this work. I have a New Yorker CGS-A series boiler that stands no higher than 5ft tall. I have no idea what the model number or capacity of the boiler is. After, hurricane Sandy blew my lights I think it prudent to setup some sort of contingency plan to power the boiler and my automatic water feeder.



Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Any info you want just let me know and I will get it quickly.

SteamPunkd

Forgot the year

This boiler was purchased in 2001-2002.







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George_36

Before I calculate

the load, I have a few questions, as I am not familiar with the whole process.



1) Measure the height and width of each radiator

2) Figure out how much water the boiler uses to heat up all the radiators. What is the best way to measure this?

3) I add up the length and width of the radiator and I am not sure after that.

Shalom

Be careful with inverters. They don't always work.

I had exactly this situation here.



I have a two-family  house with two boilers, one for each floor. The one for my floor is a 1963-vintage Peerless millivolt system (which was installed by the Mayor of Hasbrouck Heights NJ, as it happens!) which worked fine all through the 8 days we had no power. My tenant's boiler was recently replaced with a new Utica, which requires 24VAC to run the electrical stuff. (Damper, low water shutoff, possibly the ignition although it does seem to have  a gas pilot, I'm not sure what else.) This comes from a transformer that's permanently wired in, mounted on a 4x4" square electrical box.



Power went out Monday afternoon. Tuesday morning, I tried to hook up an inverter to power up their boiler. I had a couple of 12 volt, 12AH gel cells and a 400-watt Coleman inverter which has worked fine for years. I wired the primary (120 volt end) of the 24 volt transformer to a plug, plugged it into the inverter, and turned everything on. Now  this transformer is a 50VA unit, meaning it will supply a max of 2 amps at the output, and since the ratio of primary:secondary is 5:1, this means that it should draw not  more than 400 mA at the input. This inverter can supply over 3 amps continuously, so it should run the system with no problems, right?



Unfortunately, it didn't.  When I powered it up, the LEDs on the low water cutoff came on, it did whatever it usually does on startup, then at the point where the gas usually comes on and the damper opens, the LEDs dimmed as if the current draw was too high. I figured the battery was flat (I'd used it all night for something else), so unhooked that one and hooked up the spare, the LEDs dimmed as before ... and the inverter blew its fuse. The input to this thing is fused at 40A (i.e. 480VA), which means that either something was trying to draw 20 amps out of that little 2 amp transformer, or the inverter has developed an internal short.



OK, that's weird. Shouldn't have happened, this inverter is supposed to shut down if you try to draw more than it can supply (like when I tried to use it for a refrigerator once. Yeah right.)  I unplugged the transformer, and replaced the fuse on the inverter, but it blew  again, with no load at all, as soon as I hooked up the battery.



I shrugged and said Oh well, I tried. Hooked everything back up the way it had been, and waited for the power to come back on.



This past Monday, PSE&G finally replaced the pole that had been uprooted from the sidewalk and got the juice turned back on. I wasn't home, so I instructed the tenant how to turn on the boiler (simple, just flip the big red switch...) He reported that when he did, there was a Pop from the switch box, and nothing else happened. When I got home, I found that the breaker had tripped. (The installer had run a separate line to the boiler with its own 15A breaker.) It appears that the transformer has burned out, because resetting the breaker didn't help.



Tuesday I picked up a new transformer at an alarm/CCTV supply house, wired it in, and hooked it up, and everything now works as it should, so the only thing damaged was the transformer, but I'm still wondering what happened. Did the inverter fail and kill the transformer, or vice versa? Is it possible that the inverter supplies square waves instead of sine waves and the transformer didn't like that? Might the inverter have failed from unrelated causes, and  it would have worked with a different inverter? Who knows.

PMJ

Steam w/o electricity

I have a gasoline generator that connects to the main house panel. If there wasn't any gasoline available I have a standing pilot and the plumbing all set to go around the gas valve - totally manual but I can have heat.