SUBMERGED Boilers and Water heater. What absolutely needs replacing?

Joseph_4

HI. I'm a heating contractor in NYC. I live in the Rockaways on Long Island. I have lots of customers who both Boiler and water heater have submerged either partially, some fully in salt water. I'm working on one customer"s boiler and told him, I'm replacing all controls electrical, gas valve, pump etc that have been under water. am cleaning up  all burner tubes. After replacing everything it still isn't lighting off smoothly all the time. I wont let him use it until its burning properly. Its natural gas.

My question is this. My plumbing supply is already almost out of water heaters, boiler controls etc. What ABSOLUTELY needs replacing in the interum period to get people heat and hot water. So I'm asking both for regular water heaters and cast iron atmospheric boilers  Was told water heaters MUST all be thrown out. Need to know if replace gas valve/control and clean up burner tray is enough till water heaters stock replenished. Need to know by boilers if replace all controls and gas valve and clean up if thats enough.

Its easy to tell everyone to spend $5000 dollars and put in new boilers, but not everyone can afford, plus all these people have no heat. what is safe and workable for an interum period even if these people will replace when insurance money comes through.

Thanks

Joe

HHI services LLC

JStar

Flood

Nothing is safe. Eveything must be replaced. Insurance or FEMA will cover the cost.



Boilers are expensive. How much does a new family cost?

Joseph_4

Not enough water heaters or boilers out there

I agree, however, just to borrow our problem with long lines with no gas. It takes a lot longer to replace the boiler than replace all controls. The boiler is a cast iron pot. If you tell me the cast iron will get a hole in it in 3 months cause of salt water exposure instead of 20 yrs, well at least one family and maybe their neigbors can have heat instead of  me telling everyone. sorry you have to wait for me to reinstall a new boiler. I'm talking about temporary then. money was only one issue. Takes me a solid day to pipe in new boiler. those who do have the money and a new crated boiler will want it put in properly ( crated cause they will run out shortly etc.. let them procure a new one for me just to do the job) you'll get to 1/4 of the people who need help NOW.

I'm talking about survival here. Manufacturers  can condemn everything to save their liability. I'm talking about facts. Please explain why the boiler itself and piping MUST be replaced. I'm talking complete rewiring and ALL new controls. Just leaving the boiler and piping for temporary use.

Joe 

Gordan

Manufacturers condemn everything to avoid liability

Are you sure you want to take on that liability? It's a rotten reason to abandon something that might be salvaged, but there's that saying, no good deed goes unpunished. Presuming that it's a good deed, in the first place.



Not an answer to your question, but something to consider anyway.

Joseph_4

Manufacturers, liablity and helping people

Gordan, I appreciate your response. I'm the guy who spoke with Frank 2 weeks ago about Carlin Gas burner on Burnham Megasteam.

Am I willing to take the liability? I want to do what is safe for interum period to help people. I dont play any games, do not do unsafe things. I test my boiler jobs with combustion analyzers and do eveything according to code in normal situations

I made a simple plug to my boiler which powers L1 and L2 and I plug it in and out of my generator and my family has heat. (thank god, I didn't get flooded, but yeah so far no electric for a week)  my youngest child 4. (I'm using the 7 gallons of gas that I have wisely.)  Its probably against some code.

 All of us in this industry know how to help ourselves cause we have the know how. you'll do it for yourself cause you know its fine and safe temporarily. Yeah I want to do that for my customers.

Codes are general for the masses in  general. Not for basic survival. telling families to go to a shelter is also probably under some code restriction and extremely difficult for families.

Gordan, if you dealt with flood situations then I need your knowledge. I need experts like you to help me help people.

Liability, well... I think we will do it correctly so nothing bad is going to happen. By the way can I speak to you on the phone?  

Thanks

Joe

STEAM DOCTOR

safety vs. boiler longevity

There seem to be two issues here. One is safety. All controls need to be be replaced because the submerged ones can not be relied upon to operate properly. You must assume that the burners and flue passageways have sand,dirt etc. The burners must be cleaned or replaced. The flue passageways must be THOROUGHLY cleaned. That should resolve the safety concerns. The second concern is the longevity of the boiler. The salt water could seriously shorten the lifespan of the boiler but that should not be your concern. If the customers knows that they are investing money in a boiler that might need replacing in the near future then you are off the hook. Monetary decisions are for the customer. Safety decisions are for the professional.



P.S. You should also replace insulation because the wet insulation will probably develop mold and may be contaminated with sewage.

JohnNY

MANY OF THE EFFECTS OF FLOODING ARE NOT IMMEDIATELY APPARENT.

The pitting and breaking down of the metals that controls, gas valves, burner tubes, pilot tubes, orifices, etc are made of WILL corrode and close up or become porous in a short amount of time. When you walk away from a flooded appliance patting yourself on the back that you did the right thing, rest assured it is highly likely you've put people in danger and opened yourself to limitless liability.



Aside from that, jacket insulation, once it gets wet, is no longer insulation. So then you've got the dangers associated with heat moving right through the heat exchanger and firing chamber to the outside sheet metal jacket panels.



I'm not even going to bring up efficiency losses because who cares.



Right now you've got a family of cold clients.



Call that a "win" compared to a family of dead clients.

Steamhead

You got the wrong Gordan

Gordon- or "Gordo"- is my partner.



We never try to salvage flooded equipment. We replace it or we don't do the job. Period.



Most insurance companies will back us on this, as well as GAMA/AHRI and FEMA.

Rich_L

Floods

We delt with devastating floods in the summer of 2008 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. My heart goes out to you all.



At the time we were told by our suppliers, first and foremost replace ANY submerged gas valves and controls. Remove and clean burners. Insulation will dry out quickly but be mindful of it till it is. This is emergency situation response and manufacturers recommend - require replacing all equipment that's been submerged.



Good luck and all of you in the NE are in my thoughts and prayers.



Rich

Joseph_4

Thanks for all the help! and Sorry Frank for the mixup

As a result of all the posts here and to bn's question about flooded boilers, I abandoned my first and last try at salvaging a boiler that submerged. I spent 10 hours in his house and $500 on parts. If it isn't safe, well then lets start from scratch.....  After showing him all the posts this morning, he's actually happy to go ahead with a new boiler which we ordered this morning eventhough, believe it or not his boiler that got submerged was new and was installed april 2012. He never had a winter with it!  I was simply unaware because flooding of this scale never happened here before. The information shared here is priceless. Thank You Dan! 

Frank, I apologize, for mixing up your partner with someone else.

Thanks

Joe

HHI Services LLC

jjheat

CO Death

I know of a contractor in my area that wanted to be a hero and recommission a salt water flooded boiler when 2 contractors including myself told the owner that the boiler was garbage. Almost 1 year to the day after the boiler was recommissioned, the owner of the house called me and asked me to come and check the boiler out due to a weird smell. i knocked on the door and the women of the house answered the door crying. I asked her what had happened and she told me that they woke up that morning and found the family dog had died overnight in his cozy spot in the basement near the boiler. I consoled her and proceeded to walk down the basement stairs when it hit me. All I could smell was a distinct odor of a gas burner burning bad. As I got to the boiler I found that all the combustion particles were dumping out of the draft hood into the air.I quickly tested the co level near the boiler and within seconds my meter went to the max. It seems the boiler sections rusted and dropped large rust particles onto the burners causing boiler to run with very high Co that killed the dog.The chimney cap had blown away 1 year ago due to the storm and a squirrel family now lived in the flue blocking the flue completely. I replaced the boiler and had chimney cleaned and new cap put on for the customer.

DON'T REPAIR FLOODED EQUIPMENT!!!!

icesailor

Change it or walk away:

Its MY experience that if you help someone out by getting their water soaked equipment going, they will not change it until they die, sell the house, or the equipment fails and must be replaced.

Just because it is a cast iron boiler, doesn't mean that there won't be corrosion.

People in bad situations will break your heart. If you help them out and go out on a limb, they will never admit that you had advised them not to do what you did. You will be responsible for whatever you do. Its called :Intent".

Don't do it. Let them call someone else. Don't let yourself be "someone else".

Joseph_4

This thread just keeps on getting better

I live in the Rockaways, NY. As stated, this is the first time in my life to experience this flooding.When my customers ask me " Are they trying to scam me. Fema told me I have to throw everything out|"   I refer them to this thread and a different one and then there are NO more question. I seriously thank all of you for posting your experiences. Aside from educating other professionals with no prior flood experience. It saves us a ton of time in explaining to customers all the issues and lets us go foward with helping them and additional people

kudos to all of you

Joe Hardoon

HHI Services LLC

Patchogue Phil_2

cascade of issues

If that chimney cap did not blow off,  the squirrels wouldn't have blocked the flue.  The  high CO issue might not have been detected for many years since most gas burners are not serviced on a yearly basis.



What is glaring is that the homeowners did not have a working CO detector near the burner!!!!

STEAM DOCTOR

Crazy

Just got call from customer in sandy area. Customer is without power and heat since sandy. Customer called me last week asking me to install generator. I said no because I am not an electrician. Customer calls today. There is a worker there and he wants to know how to hook up generator. I say I am not an electrician. He asks is it ok if he hooks up to the emergency shutoff switch near basement stairs. I said if you hook up there you must make sure that you haven't bypassed any of safety controls( I have no way of knowing is switch is upstream or downstream of safeties, can't make assumptions when it comes to peoples lives) He asked how do we know if safeties are bypassed. I said you have to disconnect everyone of the safety controls and see if boiler will fire. He says WHERE ARE THE SAFETY CONTROLS? ARE THEY IN THE BOILER ROOM? Cant make this stuff up

Long Beach Ed

Salt Water on Cast Iron

Joseph, your thread seems to have been hijacked into a discussion about safety and controls.  I too, grew up in Rockaway, and have many connections with that community.  I now own and manage properties in neighboring coastal towns and operate a New York City plumbing business.  



The importance and integrity of electric controls has been well discussed here.  I think everyone agrees that the safe course, perhaps the only course, is to replace all electronics, gas valves, etc.  that have been exposed to water. 



But manufacturers vary in their advice regarding iron castings.  The ones we contacted suggest that the salt water be rinsed from them and after that they are fine.  It's iron.  Rinsed properly, the castings should suffer no ill effects.  



We can defer to a discussion of the economies of repairing and rebuilding submerged boilers.  Properly replacing all controls, cleaning burner tubes, rinsing a boiler, drying insulation is a hugely time consuming job.  It definitely has warranty and liability ramifications and probably is more trouble than most professionals would feel it is worth. 



But with all that in mind, we shouldn't depart from the manufacturers' statements that a submerged iron heat exchanger, once properly serviced, suffers little damage from a short bout with salt water.  



Time is money, Johnny.  If you can spend six hours messing with a flooded boiler and come out ahead of spending a day replacing it with a new one, let me know how you do it.    Remember, once you mess with that submarine, you'll own it, and your hero status will only last until the  first callback.

Mcboiler1234

Boiler underwater

A boiler underwater is repairable yes it may be easier to replace entire boiler so that they can make money and warrantee the install but if your insurance company don't cover or if FEMA doesn't kick in what can a person do? If you're handy do what I did and repair it. You will need to know what you're doing or you can hire someone who knows what they are doing. Once I received my new target wall kit,cam sensor and pump motor the only thing left to do is remove burner and controls for cleaning. All is done and boiler starts, had it checked by boiler company and all is good! Cost $159 for kit, cam sw sensor $20, motor $50 cleaning $0, total cost for boiler repair $230. New boiler $5-8 thousands.! Most likely circulators will need to be replaced will check later cus I'm taking a hot shower!!!

JStar

Water

This advice is reckless, dangerous, ill-advised, and just plain wrong. Submerged controls should NEVER be reused. I've seen water damaged furnaces "dried out and cleaned" and then light on fire a few months later. It is not worth the risk.

nicholas bonham-carter

Worthy of study

There are probably a lot of people with boilers rescued from floods, whose owners, or their repairmen have revived the waterlogged boiler. This was probably done, either through ignorance of the dangers involved, or because of financial, or practical necessity. There may be a procedure which would result in a safe repair, although as it would involve replacing all the electrical components, and washing the sections in fresh water, it must be so labor intensive as to be prohibitively expensive.

It would be interesting to do some sort of anonymous survey to see the numbers of people who have had any sort of experience with this sort of situation.--NBC

STEAM DOCTOR

submered

Good morning. When boilers or other equipment come into contact with salt water then the risks are considerably magnified. Any residue that adheres to the boiler (including the ever important flue/products of combustion/ carbon monoxide passageways) will gradually eat away the boiler. The most significant result can be the disintegration of the flue passageways which can lead to fires, flame rollout and carbon monoxide poisoning.



Here is an interesting fact that I became aware of recently. When they remove airplane "black boxes" from salt water, they are never exposed to air. They are transferred from the salt water directly into containers of fresh water. They are then transferred in sealed containers of salt water. Reason behind this is that if the "black boxes " are exposed to fresh air after coming into contact with salt water, they will begin to disintegrate. I dont know what the black boxes are made of so this may not be a good comparison. Bottom line is don't take chances with anyones life.

Long Beach Ed

Serviced after Swimming

Most of the cast iron boilers we see in the Sandy areas have been serviced and are still working in basements. 



They have had their controls and gas valves replaced, but I'm certain the iron sections haven't been washed down. 



It would be interesting to know what effect a one-time submersion in salt water will have on the iron.  I suspect it will be little if any. 



Eddie

icesailor

Underwater Boilers:

I had a customer who had a Weil McLain 68-7 or 8 section boiler go swimming in the No Name Storm of 10/20/1991, "The Perfect Storm". When I got there, someone else had changed all the circulators and cleaned up the burner. It wasn't totally submerged but close. I left it as was/is. A few months later, it was flooded again but not as high. I replaced the circulators, burner and controls, and turned it back on. The system was full of antifreeze and it is always flooded under the house. The boiler was installed between 1985 and 1989. In the Spring of 2013, I replaced the burner because it went swimming. The boiler is still running although I told the owners it needed to be replaced because of age and other considerations. Like being constantly flooded.

It was a hack install, in a space that was way too small for the install. If and when I would have replaced it, I would have had to raise it above the 100 year flood level. Left alone, it didn't need to be raised. Or so it was ruled.

I proposed a direct vented wall mounted gas unit. Way too much consideration on the part of the owner. I got it going for their $30,000 July monthly rental and left for Florida. Someone else's problem.

icesailor

Salt Water Holiness:

It isn't the salt water rusting holes through the Cast Iron, its the sotting away of section seals and that you can end up with no tightness of the boiler. I've seen "Salty's" that when I went there, I could see reflections of the flame through the burned out covers.

Its a personal decision that shouldn't be made hastily. If the owner is someone driving a Caddy Esplanade and has three waterfront cottages on the Joisey Shore that went for a swim, and the owner lives in Philly on the Main Line or Fairfield Connecticut, I'd be wishing him Health, Happiness and Long Distance. If it was some retired guy in his later years, I'd be making a judgment. I prefer not to participate in someone's cheapedness. Someone else can do that for me. I'll give then a list of names of my favorite competition. And call them

Mcboiler1234

Manufacture of boiler instructions for flooded boilers

http://www.weil-mclain.com/en/multimedia-library/pdf/weil-mclain-pdf/service-bulletins/sb-0001.pdf

If they build them and say they can be repaired after flooding then I think it's possible.

Mcboiler1234

Boiler still ok

Read most post.... Was some scary stories about dog dying, carbon monoxide scare etc... Yes it's all possible but I don't think it's a cookie cutter approach to everyone's problem. Everyone will and has to make their choice on whether to fix or replace and if they may choose to repair it would be nice to be equipped with some info they can use. Anything that may be repairable have it's pros and cons . If I had replaced my boiler would it have worked , YES! If I fix my boiler would it work ...YES! Could I die with new boiler, YES!! Could I die with old boiler , yes , or with repaired boiler yes... No matter what choice it's always a risk! Protect yourself at all times. Install CO detectors WHETHER ITS A NEW OR OLD BOILER.! I repaired my flooded boiler and it's working just fine. Ps . I also installed new CO detectors that I should've had anyway:-)

Zman

Instructions

Did you read the service notice you just posted?

You did not do all that...

If you had you would realize that just from parts point of view, you have already bought a new boiler.

JStar

Boiler

Again, this is a very misleading piece of advice. We are PROFESSIONALS. Our advice is based on safety first, for every repair on every appliance. It would never be in the best interest of your safety to recommend doing what you did. It is not only unsafe for the people in your home, but for those in your neighbor's homes as well. What is a CO detector going to do about a house fire? Nothing. And what about a boiler explosion? Nothing.



If I were to go into your home today, and hear you describe what you did, I would be completely justified in red-tagging your system and having you sign off on using it in the future, taking full legal responsibility. Even then, taking responsibility will never bring back a dead family member. Bad move all around.

Patchogue Phil_2

What caused the fire?

I don't have a water damaged furnace (or boiler) and I am not trying to "fix" a water damaged furnace (or boiler).



I am just curious which component caused the water damaged furnace to catch on fire??

JStar

Fire

In this one particular case, the main control board was submerged and dried out. The circuits on the back of the board shorted out and lit the entire interior of the furnace on fire. Any electronic or electrical device can do the same thing.



I've also seen a water heater suffer a minor explosion because the burner tubing was blown out but still had debris inside, causing gas to fill the entire heater chamber before firing.

Long Beach Ed

Cast Iron

I think three things seem to be appearing obvious. 



Controls, wiring, gas valve must be replaced if flooded.   Insulation, fireboxes, etc should be replaced.12



Burner tubes, etc, should be cleaned, flushed and examined. 



Not a darn thing happens to the cast iron sort of it getting wet.

JStar

Water

Add to that the burner manifold, orifices, and (I would replace) the burner tubes. Nasty, rusty things build up inside those tiny manifold and orifice passages. Drying them out is never good enough. Basically, the only thing that you can keep is the boiler block and maybe the jacket, sans insulation.

RobG

Parts

If you have ever priced factory replacement parts (less block) you would realize that by the time you purchased all of them you would pay about the same amount as a new boiler but if you bought a new boiler you would start out with a fresh warranty.



If you were to build a boiler by purchasing replacement parts(including block) you would typically pay twice the amount verses purchasing a fully assembled (and delivered) new boiler.



Rob



Rob

Patchogue Phil_2

True

What you say is true.



However,  in the aftermath of a natural disaster like hurricane Sandy new boilers were near impossible to get.  For a long time.



One probably could mail-order all the individual replacement parts from across the country overnight or within days.  If it had been much colder here (Long Island area) there'd have been lots of burst frozen water pipes.



Then there is the added labor charge of R&R the furnace or boiler vessel  versus the labor time to replace all the components while leaving the furnace/boiler in place. Some furnaces/boilers have simple components that can be swapped out relatively quickly.



It can be a tough choice,  depending upon the conditions at the time. 



Cost and time are major factors especially when people had other costly damage to fix from a flood.