Scary Story

Paul48

Was talking with a guy at work, and he started talking about the fact they had a new steam boiler installed in their house. He's recently divorced, and he and his brother are living in the house, left to them by their mother. Anyway......He said the old boiler went bad right before Christmas. There was no heat, and his brother told him to go add water to the boiler. I'm sure you've guessed.........He added water to an empty boiler that was still firing. I looked at him, and said,"you're lucky you weren't killed". Six months later, and he had no clue. No one had ever told him. He walked away before i could say much else, and left me thinking.......he had a new steam boiler installed, and still has no idea how to maintain it.

Paul48

I'll have a conversation with him the next time I see him. I didn't have the time to get into it with him, but I will. I'm not surprised, but from the look on his face, he was.

KC_Jones

Doesn't surprise me at all. Most of the people I know keep their head planted squarely up their own rear end with respect to mechanical systems in their own house. It makes heat I am happy, it stops making heat I call some guy to fix it then complain about how expensive it is. Here is a better question, new steam boiler and it dry fired? What happened to the brand new LWCO it should have had installed? If it was the old boiler, who wasn't maintaining things so it's LWCO was functioning properly? Basic yearly maintenance on a steam boiler is pretty straight forward and most homeowners that want to maintain their own equipment can learn. If they would rather be hands off they should still learn so they know it is being properly maintained. I would rather my house not blow up, then worry about blaming some service tech later. No matter what happens with insurance and property damage, I can't ever get my children, wife or my life back. Education is cheap and easy in the grand scheme of things. You are right that is a scary story.

Paul48

KC....the reason for the new boiler was that, that had happened with the old.

Paul48

I know it happens all the time. People ignorantly put themselves and others in harms way. It's just shocking when someone tells you they just did it, and still have no clue, how dangerous it was.

Paul48

Hat.........Is there a point there, somewhere? I just shared a "stupid people" experience.Here's another.....old, as you will tell from the content.
My father was in charge of maintainence for large, well known hospital, here in CT. One day, my father gets called into the chief surgeons office, and the guy tells him that after long surgeries the surgeons would like to have a cigarette in the doctors lounge, but can never find matches. He holds up a Bic lighter and tells my father he'd like him to mount this to the wall in the lounge. My father, being a smart-****, asks him how he would like him to mount that. This surgeon, with degrees from all over the country, holds up the lighter, points at the butane chamber on the bottom of the lighter, and says," drill a hole through here, and hang it on a chain". These are the folks running the country. Now thats scary!

BobC

Years ago my old boss and i were discussing how to extricate ourselves from and engineering snafu when the shipper stuck his head in the door and said they had dropped a 55 gallon drum of paint thinner and it was leaking out of a seam.

The boss told him to use a wet/dry vac to clean up the spill and then transfer the contents of the drum top an empty drum. I told the kid to NOT go anywhere near the spill with a wet/dry vac and i explained to the boss the likely consequences of running those fumes over a universal brush motor. After a brief pause he agreed with me.

The boss had a MS in engineering but sometimes you had to wonder.

Bob

Paul48

My father was supervising the removal of a several million dollar piece of equipment. They had it hooked up to the crane, when the facility engineer came out, and started screaming," lift it up". My father yelled, "not yet!", but the engineer started giving him a ration of s--t. So...my father backed up, and told the crane operator to do as he says. They proceeded to rip it in half. It was still bolted to the ground. The engineer was walked out, that afternoon.

JUGHNE

The Darwin Awards series of books contains the quote of Will Rogers: "If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"

"Winners of the Darwin Awards get recognition because they have removed themselves from the Gene Pool-thereby ensuring that the next generation is descended from one less idiot."

www.DarwinAwards.com

On rare occasion someone who lives through their dumb attack gets an honorable mention because they set an example for the next candidate to be successful in their attempt.

One I believe was the guy in the lawn chair with the helium weather balloons holding him above LAX airport. He had a 6-pack of beer and was waving a pistol that was supposed to take out some balloons to get him back on the ground.
The commercial airline pilots probably felt like they were reporting a UFO as they called this into the control tower.
(I heard this on Coast to Coast with Art Bell, so it must be true )

Another quote by Mark Twain in the book: "I did not go to his funeral, but I wrote a nice letter saying I approved of it."

ChrisJ

I am very surprised that he's still alive.

Isn't this the exact reason for most boiler explosions back in the day?

Paul48

I told him he was very lucky they didn't have to scrape him off the walls with a spoon. His eyes got as big as saucers. If it was a boiler from "back in the day", he'd be dead. The old castings were much thicker, and the energy built up before it let loose, would surely have done him in.

ChrisJ

Hatterasguy said:

Does the new boiler have an automatic water feeder/LWCO?

Problem solved for such individuals.

Sure, if the LWCO works.
My neighbor with his 1920s redflash boiler had a clogged LWCO which I argued with him and his wife for months to get it fixed because it could kill them and maybe me. Everytime I brought it up his wife told me to stop trying to scare them, the heat works fine.

Finally, I gave up and just fixed it my self. #67 LWCO, broke it all down, cleaned it, worked like new and now I make sure he flushes it with the burner going so he confirms it shuts the burner off. His oil guy told him to do it with the burner off like a dope.

That's the one thing I hate about my probe LWCO, there's no real easy way to test it without draining the boiler.

ChrisJ

Hatterasguy said:

What's the general experience with probe types? I would ASSUME that it would have less sensitivity to malfunction than the 67.

No idea,
I suspect the #67 would have a lower chance in my hands.

Paul48

ChrisJ.......Build a sight-glass with a probe port at the base? Close 2 valves and drain the sight-glass to test. Just a thought.

ChrisJ

Paul48 said:

ChrisJ.......Build a sight-glass with a probe port at the base? Close 2 valves and drain the sight-glass to test. Just a thought.

Doesn't someone actually make a setup like that to adapt a probe to a boiler that isn't made for it?

Paul48

I have no idea...It was just a random thought. I figured if anyone could make it work, you could.

ChrisJ

Yep, Hydrolevel does.
I think it may have caught my eye for this reason back in 2011.

http://www.hydrolevel.com/new/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48

RobG

You would still have to drain the boiler with that LWCO as it mounts between the boiler and the lower valve for safety reasons.

ChrisJ

Good point, can't isolate the LWCO from the boiler otherwise you could do so with the LWCO full of water and leave it.

Jean-David Beyer

Some people are so dumb, and there are so many who are dumb in the same way, that they are no longer eligible for a Darwin Award. People who get hit by railroad trains, for example.

In spite of this, I nominated a couple of dozen people who were killed by getting hit by a railroad train. It was a two track line at a railroad station. A local train pulled into the station to let passengers get off. Coming the other way was an express train that did not stop at that station. Signs everywhere told those wishing to cross the tracks to use the overhead passageway. They ignored this and the whole two dozen were killed by the same train at the same time. But the judges at the Darwin Awards did not grant an exception for what amounted to a couple of dozen morons committing suicide.

When you make something foolproof, a better fool comes along.

Steamhead

You can't fix stupid.

Mad Dog_2

As Staff Sgt. Rosa would yell at the does in basic: "Don't spend yo life STUCK ON STUPID. Mad dog

Mad Dog_2

I meant DOPES

jumper

Domestic steam boilers should have redundant safeties. Because many folk don't maintain them. How about a temperature sensor for the fire side?

ttekushan_3

I went to a site to evaluate a small steam boiler that was reported to have "issues." As I walked through a space under rehab towards the basement stairs I noticed one of the trash barrels had a nice CO detector laying discarded near the top of the heap. I went downstairs and opened the tiny boiler room door and was hit with a lot of heat and that aldehyde combustion smell. I closed that door, went right back up the stairs, turned down the thermostat and opened the front door.

After a short time, I went back with my combustion analyzer in its "CO room sniff" mode and found it safe to return. What I saw was a tiny boiler room, a recently dry-fired atmospheric steam boiler, visible combustion zone through parts of the boiler jacket, a new #67 LWCO and sight glass assembly piggy backed onto the one that clogged and a covered-up outdoor fresh air inlet.

The CO was due to flame impingement of the side wall of the base, the sheet steel having warped and melted over one burner, and the escape of the CO into the room was assisted by the blocked air vent.

The explanation for the blocked fresh air vent was that it "caused a draft" (!)

The explanation for the CO detector in the trash was, and I quote, "There was sup'n wrong wid it. It kept goin' off."