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Weil-McLain Gas Fried Water Boiler Rusted Out in 3 years

kseering
kseering Member Posts: 4
in Gas Heating
This is a Weil-McLain GV90+ Series 2 Water Boiler. It was installed about 4 years Ago in a basement room. Vented outside.
There is also a 20 year old gas forced air furnace in the room that is no longer used. That is also vented outside.
There is a small freezer in the room with other stored household items. NO CHLORINE products are in our possesion. Nothing in the room has any rust, in fact the old unused furnace has no rust.

I posted back in August. It took me a while to get all of the pictures and information. But this is really happening to us. Winter is coming again.

We started having problems with the boiler leaking after about 2 or 3 years. The service tech thought it was a loose connection. as it got worse he called a service rep. The Rep came over and they discovered that it was rusted out. Picture attached. The distributor is blaming inside air quality and / or outside air quality. We live in a small unincorporated rural community with no industry. We've been here 25 years. The distributor replaced the boiler. The new boiler was installed in November of 2016.

In April 2017 we noticed a small leak again. We found a hole in a part on the outside of the furnace that was leaking. Picture attached. Our Service tech said the same thing was happening.

Does anyone have any idea on what is happening ?

We have well water that the installer put something in at install.







Comments

  • Zman
    Zman Member Posts: 7,611
    Welcome back! Good to hear from you.
    You have a water quality issue.
    First thing to do. Test your boiler side water. You need to know PH,TDS and Salinity.
    That boiler has pretty tight requirements particularly for PH (7-8.5).
    Do you have any constant leaks, even slow ones? Does the relief valve ever discharge? Do you have pex piping in the system? If so could you post a picture?
    "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough"
    Albert Einstein
    Ironmankseering
  • Ironman
    Ironman Member Posts: 7,551
    Agree with Zman completely: you have a water side issue.
    Bob Boan
    You can choose to do what you want, but you cannot choose the consequences.
    kseering
  • MilanD
    MilanD Member Posts: 1,160
    edited September 2017
    Oh, wow that's just terrible!!
    (The rest of comment deleted - I thought this was steam boiler).
    kseering
  • kcopp
    kcopp Member Posts: 4,472
    GV90 is a Gas fired Hot water boiler.....
    Test the water.
    I would be using the Caleffi Hydrofill to fill that boiler up.
    Quite frankly a Cast iron boiler may not be the right boiler for your application.
    kseeringcoby
  • kseering
    kseering Member Posts: 4
    I will pass the info on. Thanks.
  • newagedawn
    newagedawn Member Posts: 586
    edited September 2017
    i would state, if the water is good and in no need of filtering,...welcome to the world of china cast iron, made especially for the us, sucks but is happening, also is this a cold start application or triple aqua stat?
    "The bitter taste of a poor install lasts far longer than the JOY of the lowest price"
    nicholas bonham-carter
  • Zman
    Zman Member Posts: 7,611
    It doesn't sound like someone else is going to solve this for you (or they would have already). This is a very obvious water side issue.
    I would either find a new contractor to test the water or have it tested yourself.
    "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough"
    Albert Einstein
    Mike
  • Paul Pollets
    Paul Pollets Member Posts: 3,663
    Aside from the water quality issues, is the system connected to non-barrier radiant tubing?
    ZmanMilanDkcopp
  • kcopp
    kcopp Member Posts: 4,472
    What Paul said... What do you have for radiation?
  • ScottSecor
    ScottSecor Member Posts: 902
    I realize this may be anecdotal, but we have worked on about a fifteen Weil McLain GV boilers. All were installed (by others) at least eight years ago. All are filled with city water (no well water in my area). Some are piped properly and some are not. Some are maintained annually and some are not. Not one of them has has failed or shown signs of leakage (yet).

    What I'm trying to say is that they appear to be a boiler that was well made and have a decent life cycle. When they were introduced we feared they would be problematic and were installing truly condensing boilers instead (both aluminum and stainless steel). I'm still not sure that was the correct decision (this was back in 2000 or thereabouts).

    I agree with others that if the fresh air is "clean" and the gas mixture is "clean" then it must be a water issue. I'd recommend having the water tested immediately. Finally, I cannot recall ever replacing a cast iron water boiler that was three years old (or less).
  • j a_2
    j a_2 Member Posts: 1,801
    newagedawn said:

    i would state, if the water is good and in no need of filtering,...welcome to the world of china cast iron, made especially for the us, sucks but is happening, also is this a cold start application or triple aqua stat?

    We keep shipping it over and they just ship it back..as junk...Maybe some day we will learn...
  • Catherine
    Catherine Member Posts: 7
    My Weil McClain boiler has run for almost 40 years on city water. Very happy!
  • Fred
    Fred Member Posts: 8,542
    edited November 2017
    You say you are in a rural area, using well water. Are there fertilizers used, nearby, that may blow in the air or seep into the well?
  • HomeOwnerJack
    HomeOwnerJack Member Posts: 5
    My bet is that you bypass circulatory is not working properly and your condensing inside the boiler jacket.

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