Steam boiler always failing.

Snowmelt

I have a new customer ( about 2 months) I showed picture of thee steam boiler. Not piped correctly. Would that cause other issues to go on for instance first call I changed pilot tube. Worked ok, then changed damper , worked for 2 weekes then changed low water cut off. A few days later a black pipe off the boiler wasn’t tight and was leaking. But started to leak a month into the boiler being fixed a few times for other things. Now the boiler went down again on a Saturday. A told the customer that the boiler isn’t installed ( piped correctly) but I’m concerned if it’s not piped correctly would it start wearing out other parts? I even had to reset the spill switch in the back of boiler.

Jamie Hall

In my view it would be unlikely for the poor piping by itself to cause the other problems. However, the underlying cause of the poor piping -- that is careless, if not simply poor, workmanship --might. Difficult to prove, though.

Snowmelt

That’s what I’m thinking but let me ask , if I have the boiler running for more then 24 hours there is no way to predict what can fail next. Or let me ask like this. If the boiler wasn’t heating all the rooms, I get there open a few valves just to see if they open, then there was steam to the rooms would that do anything different. I’m thinking not but I wanted to double check myself.

Fred

How old is this boiler? Almost sounds like kids or someone always crashing into the controls or slamming into the boiler, knocking the piping out of alignment.

Snowmelt

Ironicly the customer called me, he knows I replaced damper and the spill switch, so he messed with the damper and it worked. I replaced the damper but not the wire to the damper, I’m going to order the correct wire, the supply house gave me a wire package with different ends for different connections.

mikeg2015

Snowmelt said:

That’s what I’m thinking but let me ask , if I have the boiler running for more then 24 hours there is no way to predict what can fail next. Or let me ask like this. If the boiler wasn’t heating all the rooms, I get there open a few valves just to see if they open, then there was steam to the rooms would that do anything different. I’m thinking not but I wanted to double check myself.

SO you found that several radiators were closed off? Generally you don’t want to close off any radiators Completely. It often causes short cycling as the boiler effectively becomes oversized, pressure runs higher that nessesary and you run into other issues.

Are you getting a lot of hammering, pinging, ticking sounds? This is usually caused by flash steam, sagging piping, maybe a valve partially closed.

RAdiators valves should be left open unless you are performing repairs. In some cases you can shut some down. Some 2 pipe systems do allow for throttling.