Help with Chemical Feed Pump

Homeheater

I have two Kewanee boilers in my church 792 Mbh 23.6 Hp its is a 2 pipe gravity return. We are going to add a chemical feed pump to the boilers, but with auto water feeders there is no contacts to turn on pump to add chemical when water is added. Any suggestions on how to add chemical with spending a LOT !! of money putting on float pump controllers?

nicholas bonham-carter

Better steaming with chemistry-I think not.
Why would you need any chemicals in your boiler?
Pipe the chemical feed pumps into the drain, so that you only have pure water in the boiler. Adulterated water behaves badly, in a low pressure steam boiler, and only enriches the chemical supplier, and burns more fuel.
If you had a boiler supplying constant process steam requiring a lot of makeup water, then there might be a need for constant chemical additives, but not in your case.
At the most, you can add something once to control the Ph, but certainly not a constant addition. These feeders, and auto makeup feeders are works of the devil, causing system leaks to go unnoticed, until the damage has been done. Often, with overly high system pressure, there can be an acidic build up, and so instead of adding some snake oil, reduce the pressure.
It sounds as though you have some system problems which can so easily corrected, for less than the cost of chemicals.-NBC

Steamhead

Are those steel or cast-iron boilers?

icesailor

nicholas bonham-carter said:

Better steaming with chemistry-I think not.
Why would you need any chemicals in your boiler?
Pipe the chemical feed pumps into the drain, so that you only have pure water in the boiler. Adulterated water behaves badly, in a low pressure steam boiler, and only enriches the chemical supplier, and burns more fuel.
If you had a boiler supplying constant process steam requiring a lot of makeup water, then there might be a need for constant chemical additives, but not in your case.
At the most, you can add something once to control the Ph, but certainly not a constant addition. These feeders, and auto makeup feeders are works of the devil, causing system leaks to go unnoticed, until the damage has been done. Often, with overly high system pressure, there can be an acidic build up, and so instead of adding some snake oil, reduce the pressure.
It sounds as though you have some system problems which can so easily corrected, for less than the cost of chemicals.-NBC

Somewhere, there is a chemical salesman sticking daggers in your back for upsetting their sale with the truth. My old High School Auto shop teacher used to tell us "You can't buy a mechanic in a can". He's been right mostly.

Abracadabra

Steamhead said:

Are those steel or cast-iron boilers?

@Steamhead‌ he said Kewanee, so I'm pretty sure they are steel firetube boilers. They were made here in Illinois till they got bought out and then closed down.

I've seen installations by a pretty well known boiler installer here in Chicago use chemical feeds into steel boilers. Not sure why, since we have water supply that comes in with a pH of 7.8.

Homeheater

Steamhead I am not sure how you know what to look for on boiler to see if it is steel or cast. Its has American Standard Boiler Company installed in late sixties. I am in Nebraska south central some what hard water, but were are feeding with soft water treatment. I am thinking the boilers have not been cleaned correctly for over 15 years just this year we had a company do it, they said they were the dirtiest they had ever seen. So we are looking to clean off scaling. Thank You for your response .

Steamhead

Maybe the softener is softening too much. What's the ph in the boiler?

Also post some pics of the boiler itself so we can have a look.

nicholas bonham-carter

Water softeners can provide water with excessive chlorides, which can attack the cast iron of the boiler (galvanic corrosion). I suspect your dirty boiler is related to that softened water.
Just put pure water into it, and there should be no problem.
In a well maintained system, with no water loss, there will be only a very small amount of calcium build up.
If you have leaks which require constant fresh water addition, then fix them, and cut out the salt.--NBC