water quality re: steam boilers

randallalbertson

in reading dan's excellent book, " the greening of steam" he makes the point of corrosion/ holes at the water line in a pin boiler, being aggravated by chloride (aka salt) in the water. my question is this: could a steam boiler fed with water treated with water softener salt also be a cause of this? my customer had an old Bugatti steam boiler in the house for years, decided to change it out for a new pin boiler, and within 2 years had holes at the waterline like dan described in his book. any thoughts?

SWEI

In short, yes.

Water softeners trade calcium and magnesium ions for sodium or potassium ions (depending on the salt used for regeneration.) The harder the incoming water, the more sodium ends up in the product. Sodium accelerates corrosion in ferrous metals.

Jamie Hall

Softened water is perhaps the worst possible water you could put in a boiler. Sorry about that...

Henry

If your water softener is well maintained and does its backwash, you will not get salt in your boiler. We are changin some tubes in a 5,500,000 water tube boiler that had pinholes because the watersoftener has been neglected for over 5 years. The same instal with 4.5 million has no problems because the super checks the water weekly. If salt is showing he call the softener guy.