Foaming and Priming in Steam Boilers

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Foaming and Priming in Steam Boilers

Dry steam is steam with very little liquid water in it. For heating systems, the goal has always been to have 98%-quality steam leaving the boiler.

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Controlsgirl

Great insight!

meticulousmike

hi dan,i've read somewhere in this website recently that you stated that the dead men used vinegar and in this article you stated that they used baking soda to lower the ph....it's either that or i forgot if the vinegar is used to clean the scale inside a boiler.i got this steam heat call job recently.haven't had one in many years, my first one was not a success or i should say complete success it was a nighmare with a new lady tenant with her crying sickly foster baby that she would yell at too much in a soothing way but loud enough in an obnoxious tone so that i could hear with negative comments toward me about the heat not being, right over my head in the first floor apt...i could remember her saying loudly to the baby "i know it's cold"..i lost a lot of sleep on that job and found out that this woman should never be allowed to have children as her true nasty colors came out because of me .i knew nothing about how steam boilers worked and wasn't sure if the piping was correct..my lwco replacement wiring was right when i jumped it at the boiler but my water line issue wasn't and also i too quickly junked for the mercury a millivolt tstat with a 24v hw t87.heat only.i also didn't know about tsats too well either back then.it never fired up and i thought my wiring was wrong so after too many days on the job we had to call in a pro. so i thought he was a pro cause he never corrected the water level issue and i never got a straight answer from the owner if he had to rewire the whole boiler. this would be only my 3 rd steam boiler that i've worked on.so for this job i brushed up and crash coursed a lot of helpful info from you as i could before i headed out to it so i might have misread your article about ph or the cleaning of scale inside..but i do remember reading that you were the first and only one to discover what can cause ketteling inside a boiler other than scale and that would be narrow sections in these newer units..nice job it makes sense to me who is an amateur with steam.i'm a whole lot better with residential hot water boilers,they are easy. this one that i'm working on is doing that and siphoning down below water line and spitting too much at it's mains.i think i figured out why it's siphoning down. i won't know for sure until i replace the upper brass tube on the mm #67 lwco . i found on the underside out of sight some big holes from rot.i'm going to look for spitting mains on the wall or forum to see if i can get some more help...thanks for the all the helpful info.

Koan

wouldn't baking soda increase the pH since it is a base?

Jamie Hall

Koan said:

wouldn't baking soda increase the pH since it is a base?

Yes. And vinegar will lower the pH. But baking soda will also stabilize the pH, usually somewhere right around 9 (if used in reasonable quantity!) depending somewhat on what else is in the water.

meticulousmike

yes i should know this from basic chemistry but overlooked it . i didn't have my thinking cap on because i'm trying to address some other issues.until i need to correct it i will then go looking into what i need to do-on the fly learning and action.thanks for the info.