Myster water?

jdnyc

So we have an 8 year old Peerless boiler in a 3 story 3000 SF house, with the original piping, etc., from about 1915. The glass gauge indicated it was overfilled. I emptied and emptied, and of course the low water cut-off light goes on. Okay, gauge isn't woking... So genius I am I start putting water back in, with no way of knowing how much... Right, now too much, gets into system, burner starts, and the pressure cut off stops it. Water coming out of radiators, etc.



So local utilitly under contract comes out,. Fellow basically cleans out tube, drains boiler, and gets it going. He tells me I will probably need to take out some more water over the next day or so, as the water comes back down into the boiler.



Well here it is 5 days later, I am still taking 3 or 4 plastic pails a day out, just to get the water level to about 2" below top on tube.



The only conceivable source of water seems to be the water feeder valve is leaking, since we have low water cut-off but not an automatic feed.



So the question is (thanks for bearing with me)... Do I clearly have a leak in the feeder valve, whic is easy enough to replace, or do I just underestimate the amount of water in the system? In other words, I'm up to about 15 buckets in total so far after the guy left, I get the level down to proper level and the next morning I have to take out 4 or more buckets?



Any help is appreciated. I hate to calls these guys again, I'm in NJ by NYC, and a lot of people got hit by Sandy a lot worse than I did, and they definitely have better things to do.

BobC

Domestic hot water leak?

Water coming in from outside will be cold and it is probably under 60 pounds of pressure, the steam boiler should be under two pounds of pressure. Wrap your hand around the pipe a foot above and a foot below that boiler fill valve. If both sides are cold water is flowing through the valve, if both sides are room temperature no water is flowing through the valve. If the boiler side is warmer than the feed side water was recently flowing.



Goes that boiler make domestic hot water for you with a coil inside the boiler? If so that coil might have a small leak in it that is filling the boiler. If you have an external hot water tank that gets heat from the steam boiler, the coil in that tank could be leaking water into the boiler.



Bob