leak in steam

Snowmelt

I have a system that was leaking 150 gallons a day ( in a week the autofill would be over 700 gallons) I changed out the boiler, now its down to 30 gallons a day. there are no puddles on ground. he question is is there any dye I can add to a steam system to see if its leaking out of vents and burning off or am i going to have to look at each individual vent as they warm up to see if they leak before the pipe or rad gets to hot where the steam just boils off the pipe.

Jamie Hall

Good grief. How big a system is this? No, I can't think of any dye which would evaporate and travel with the steam -- which doesn't burn off anyway, it condenses.

However, I have a lot of trouble believing that you could be losing that much through vents, even in a very big system with miserable vents.

Can you describe the system in much more detail?

ethicalpaul

Is this a steam system for a whole town? There is no residential vent that can leak 30 gallons per day and even 1 gallon per day would be pretty crazy.

Do you have buried return pipe(s)?

nicholas bonham-carter

Do you have a condensate pump and tank, which may be secretly dumping into a floor drain, or an old system with the air vent in a chimney?—NBC

Snowmelt

its not that big but big enough, I think there are about 6 steam traps. there is a condensation pump on one side of the building . there is a few things that bother me . I was there for four hours one day doing work on other boilers and the boiler im refereeing to didn't lose any water.

JUGHNE

Is that a remote transfer condensate pump?
If it fails intermittently could it be overflowing to a drain?
It not being in the boiler room could be hiding any misbehaving.

pecmsg

39 Gal a day is over 1 Gal an hour. Shouldn’t be hard to find.

EBEBRATT-Ed

Check the vent and overflow from the condensate tank. If traps are blowing through you could be loosing steam through the vent pipe

Snowmelt

I went there today, so far no leaks in system but one thing I noticed is it doesn’t cut off on pressure. I think I have it on .75 or one. Im not too sure about the condensation pump theory yet. The rep says it’s doing what it’s supposed to do, which is go on and off as needed. I did find one leek but it’s very very small.

Jamie Hall

What sort of pressure does it get up to?