Steam boiler replacement in order to save system.

johnnygreenham

Good morning everyone. I finally have some info and details on how this system runs. Looks like I need your help.
Spent 7 hours working on it yesterday with my heating friend/contractor. Finished all the piping finally! We will have to change a few control parameters. I don't want to loose peoples interest so I'll just talk about the steam issue first. If we can get that figured out, I'll mention what we saw when we introduced the large water fin radiator into the system and how we plan to tie that in as it caused us some issues.

We tested the burner pump pressure.....it came from factory set at 180 psi which was a little disappointing as I was hoping it was set too low. My friend is not happy with the flame distance inside. He is thinking we need to change the angle of the spray and maybe bump up the nozzle size very slightly so that the flame is licking the back wall. Right now we have a flame that is reaching 2/3rd's to the back. We both feel like we need the burner to make a little more steam. Just slightly more.

So Steam......fired up the system again and it ran continuously for 4 hours. It was tricky to say how much water we added as we used the bypass fill because we had to fill the two water loops that tie into the boilers water reservoir. All I can say is that once we had removed all the air out of both of those water loops, the boiler only added 2 Gal of water on the Automatic water feed form the level we started at. She ran a solid 4 hours. All radiators got hot except the very end one which has some issue and I'll explain later, just don't want to loose track of the main issue. So they all got hot, the tops were almost too hot to touch. Eventually I'd say more than half of them, the steam traps got hot enough to close at a guess. There were 4 radiators in the middle of both main loops that were very hot on top but the trap itself were luke warm only. We never build up any steam pressure, the system was just running and controlling from the thermostat. The house actually got warm!

*****Now the problem. The system for more than two hours ran continuously without the water line in the sight glass changing. It was approximately halfway down the sight glass (purple mark in photo), maybe 3/4" above the LWC and 1.5" below the WL specified by Burnham. It seemed balanced and what was coming back was equal to what was leaving. I switched the boiler off and went back in an hour. The sight glass is completely full and more. I will drain it back off to where the level it was happy running at and measure how much condensate returned after I shut it down but it just looks like the system returns the condensate too slowly. I don't understand because I feel like we only added 2 Gal. Is a condensate tank my only option at this point or am I filling the system incorrectly with these water loops tied in?




Sight glass photo after it flooded
Me almost at a point of despair.................at least we called it a day to go eat some pizza after this photo was taken!

Steamhead

johnnygreenham said:

My friend is not happy with the flame distance inside. He is thinking we need to change the angle of the spray and maybe bump up the nozzle size very slightly so that the flame is licking the back wall. Right now we have a flame that is reaching 2/3rd's to the back.

Don't do that. The MegaSteam does not use a target wall. If the flame touches the cast-iron, it will chill the flame to the point where you'll get incomplete combustion, smoke, soot etc.

Speaking of smoke and soot, did you do a smoke test as described here?

https://fueloilnews.com/2008/01/01/smoke-spots/

The author is George Lanthier, a.k.a. @Firedragon , who has probably forgotten more about oil heat than most of us will ever know.

johnnygreenham

@Steamhead . We did not do a smoke test. Just used the analyzer in the smoke stack. I can ask him if he has a Spot smoke tester but he doesn't do oil furnaces anymore. He started his own business after working for a heating/plumbing company but only does air pumps and geothermal now, so chances are he doesn't own one. To be honest, I looked and they are about $140 so if its something I should do every year in my maintenance, it's probably worth it to buy one myself. Thanks for the article reference, good little read.

Steamhead

@johnnygreenham , setting up an oil burner is not complete without a smoke test. If your friend doesn't have one, it would be well to get one. You don't want to end up like this- a smoke test would have told whomever was "servicing" this boiler that the burner was not running properly:

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/170456/door-mount-disaster-or-ohhhhh-this-is-just-wrong

johnnygreenham

@Steamhead Roger that, thank you for the advice. Will purchase my own and learn the method.

Well, Ive had a break through. After several cups of tea yesterday, lots of starring at the the thing and reading pages of books I decided to just stand back and tell myself out loud what the facts were.
I decided to fire it up and run it for a few hours, again having to add more water to keep it running, then I removed some of the radiator trap cover on the radiators that were very hot on top but warm on the bottom. Not much, just a little condensate. Then I thought about the only radiator that wasn't working. It's hard to describe but basically we had to remove the second to last radiator due to some construction remodeling that left this small radiator tucked away in the corner of the building towards the very end of that longer main. There is probably 25 feet of main line and return just for this one tiny unit plus 12 feet of branch piping. It was getting luke warm on our second test and then never warmed up again. We actually had it capped off on the first run as I couldn't find my radiator valve I'd removed 2 years prior, so I was ignoring that section of the house as I thought I had bigger fish to fry. Every other radiator in the building heated up. I'm sure you guys are saying to yourselves, ah yep, you should not have ignored such a small but important detail.
I went to those end of line cross over traps. The first smaller line was ok, just a small amount of condensate. I then crawled into the crawlspace and opened up the crossover trap on the longer main and wow. I'm not sure how much condensate was backed up that main line but it was a lot. I had to put the trap back in quickly as I'd already had it removed for over a minute and I'd sent a bunch of water back to the boiler. It was still coming through like a garden hose. I emptied 4-5 gals out of the boiler itself and then removed the trap again. I bet another 2 Gals entered the boiler after I removed the trap the second time. Over half the slight glass length rose after draining it to the bottom of the glass. The new (old stock) trap had closed and appeared to be stuck in that position but was slightly cock-eyed and there was a tiny slither of a gap on one side of the ball. I tapped the unit against a pipe and it made a small popping sounds and the unit suddenly opened. The little unit appeared to be physically bound up. That little slither of a gap must have been just enough to send some condensate back over time but hold most of it in the line forcing me to keep adding water to keep the boiler happy. When I turned it off and a few hours later have a flooded boiler.
So I popped in a replacement and bingo. The boiler only drops the water level on the slight glass 1.25" from boiler water level and maintains whilst running full tilt. All Radiators get very hot! Just stoked not have to add other components to this system and undo a bunch of our work. Thanks for all the help you have all given me on this project. It was out of my wheelhouse thats for sure but I feel like it went well and I'm proud to have gotten this system back up and running after 20+ years of cobwebs. I'd probably do it all over again as I have found it all very fascinating but I have to admit, its not really a DIY project thats for sure.

Jamie Hall

Bravo! Things in the back end of crawl spaces are a nuisance! Very glad you found the problem.

BobC

No matter the problem it's always that last little thing that's the problem. Your perseverance paid off you deserve to feel proud.

Bob

johnnygreenham

Thanks. This was the culprit.

AMservices

Congratulations! It turned out to be a  great show.  
Quoting a line from LAOSH, "Miss one of these babies on a retrofit and you're in big trouble". 

johnnygreenham

Almost a month has gone by and the system is working well. Pretty stoked with it all but I have one thing thats driving me a bit nuts. It's that cycle guard shutting the boiler down every 15 minutes. At first I thought the system could have used a longer shutdown but we found the problem with the trap failing closed. I'm now not sure I need that feature at all as the condensate never gets below 1 1/4" - 1 1/2" below full boiler water line and I almost can't imagine that 90 second shut down every 15 minutes is saving the day and keeping the water from LWCO. I just feel that the cycle guard is short cycling the burner and wasting oil/efficiency. Maybe I'm wrong but would you think it was a reasonable ideal to swap that unit out for one that doesn't have that feature or am I just barking up the wrong tree and wasting time?

Canucker

Don't like the psycho guard? You can replace it with the Safguard, it doesn't do the shutdown check

ethicalpaul

Well the cyclegard is protecting the cast body after all so I don't know if it would void the warranty.

Why do you think the cycling is wasting oil? Does your boiler use oil when it's shut down?

I almost can't imagine that 90 second shut down every 15 minutes is saving the day

I found this part humorous because...why can't you imagine it? Apparently some failures must have been happening because I know at least two manufacturers who ship a cyclegard on their boilers. Do you think the lwco maker just designed it that way, and the boiler makers are buying it just for fun?

Also, didn't you just say that the device was able to show you a problem with one of your traps?? ("At first I thought the system could have used a longer shutdown but we found the problem with the trap failing closed.")

I have drained my old boiler while it was running for some test or other, and found that the probe LWCO didn't trip until the water level was significantly lower than the probe, probably due to splashing of boiling water on it, but also maybe because it was dirty or something.

So I have done a 180 on my thinking about this device and have left it happily on my brand new Peerless.

underdog32

I bought a house that was vacant for 9 years in a foreclosure once. The house was not trashed and everything looked in good condition. The first time I fired up the steam boiler 80% of the connections leaked and the wet return was rotted.

I repiped most of that system, either by tearing it apart and re-doping the connections, or replacing the fittings/pipes entirely. The boiler itself worked fine other than the low water cutoff, pressuretrol and power vent.

My guess is that contractors don't want you to drop 20 grand on a new boiler just to connect it and find out that the pipes all need to be re-done too after 35 years of not being used. You could maybe spend 20 grand on an alternative system and get all brand new, all working stuff. If you knew for sure that the pipes had integrity then it's a different story.

Of course if you're doing the work and know that going into it then it doesn't matter, or if you're forced into it like I was because you can afford 2 pipe wrenches and some pipe, but not a professional then it also doesn't matter.

johnnygreenham

I found this part humorous because...why can't you imagine it? Apparently some failures must have been happening because I know at least two manufacturers who ship a cyclegard on their boilers. Do you think the lwco maker just designed it that way, and the boiler makers are buying it just for fun?

I'm guessing that you're right, in that there have been some failures and that this feature has made those few systems be able to operate......but I'm also thinking that if a system doesn't need this shutdown periodic feature, then why would you shut the boiler down?????
It seems a win win for the manufacture as it's a super safety bet for them and they probably also charge you for this technology but I can't image that if you don't need the feature, you are no worse off for shutting your boiler down every 15 minutes.

I'm certainly no boiler/burner expert but I'd guess that a burner firing up is where most of its inefficiencies come from.
I'd have to also guess that letting your boiler cool off for 90 seconds and then having to get it back up to boiling again, how ever short that maybe is also another inefficient if you don't need to.

You got to ask yourself.......would your system be heating better and be more efficient if it ran for 3 hours straight, or if it shut down 12 times in that 3 hours?

Just throwing it out there

johnnygreenham

@Canucker - Thanks and love the 'Psycho' analogy. I was thinking If I was to swap it out, I'd put in the 45-450 Hydrolevel Safgard, think thats what the Model I was looking at was.

MaxMercy

First, congratulations on that job. I'm fascinated by steam and read every thread although I'm sure I will never own or have to help anyone with one. I've replaced hot water boilers but I would never tackle what you did. Impressed.

johnnygreenham said:

You got to ask yourself.......would your system be heating better and be more efficient if it ran for 3 hours straight, or if it shut down 12 times in that 3 hours?

It's not like we're pushing a car and stop every few minutes losing all of the momentum and have to start over from zero. Even during the shutdown, it's still putting out steam for a while, maintaining most of it's heat, and it will get back to a full boil when the burner fires up again. If there's any inefficiencies as a trade off, I can't see it being more than a fractional percent.

ethicalpaul

johnnygreenham said:

You got to ask yourself.......would your system be heating better and be more efficient if it ran for 3 hours straight, or if it shut down 12 times in that 3 hours? Just throwing it out there

Yes, because even my boiler, like so so so many others will start to build pressure after running for an hour or so. So the psychogard is gonna save me money!

nicholas bonham-carter

Just the air removal on each cycle will use a bit of extra fuel, maybe not to much.—NBC