Why not Steam Clean??

Johnno

I've been a Dan fan for years, a consumer who had a big "ol Victorian house, and discovered the Lost Art.... and talked a number of others into getting it along the way. At some point, my plumber turned me on to Steam Clean by Comstar, an industrial products company in College Point, NY (comstarproducts.com, there's a pdf catalog of all their products, and there's a lot of other heating stuff too). I've heard it called " a diatomaceous earth product that turns the water green when clean and orange when dirty. I never have a bad or noisy boil. Call me a convert." somewhere in a discussion here. It comes in a plastic container like coffeemate, just pour it thru the relief valve (you can mix it with a little water first - I think it's one can for every 700' of boiler) It's wonderful. The water turns red (dirty) and green when it clean, and you can drain the precipitate grunge out the valve on the bottom. It's almost too good to be true. I've done skimming, and for a non plumber, it's a pain, and time consuming, and somehow seems kind of jerry-rigged, even if it's been done for a hundred years.....
- So why is it so hard to find, why hasn't the world recognized its wonderfulness, why is hard to do a Google search for it, why did it take 45 minutes to even find an obscure reference to it here??? (and why do I want to call it "Clean Steam".....) If there is some giant caveat (it makes you sterile, it rots your entire heating system.....) let me know. Even if it works only a decent percentage of the time (it's always worked for me), it's great....... It is also (allegedly) environmentally friendly, "will not swell seals", and you don't waste all that water skimming...

I now live in a 1910 3 family house with my landlord and I run off the same boiler (with me paying for it #@$%&!!!) and I'm about to do it on this boiler. I have no association with this company, just love the product.

nicholas bonham-carter

I'm glad you had apparent good results from it.
Skimming the old fashioned way removes the oil from the boiler, while these diatomaceous earth products [Squick, Cornstar, etc.] absorb the oil, and store it on the bottom of the boiler, where it may form a hard crust, slightly insulating the water from the fire.
This may be a little like sweeping the dirt under the carpet.--NBC

RobG

The review that I read doesn't seem too positive.

http://www.globalindustrial.com/p/hvac/chemicals-lubricants-cleaner/cleaner/boiler-water-priming-foaming-and-surging-treatmentcolor-coded-8-oz