Burnham and Winkler fest

archibald tuttle

So, moonlighting for a friend (who trades me by playing bass in shows for me (remember those, we used to have them bars and folks would drink and mingle and listen to music). Anyway, he got the steam bath out of the chimney when he started up his burnham 3WRH serial 646542296 with manufacturers date of 02 / 2004.

I haven't kept close enough track of which of these had a problem and burnham is coming to the table but that is an aburdly short life and i've cleaned and babied this through modest service. no low temp returns. i don't get it. I'll get a look inside sometime this week to see if it was a crack, a hole or maybe a push nipple failure.

Meantime, this is a two family very well insulated with woodstove and couple minisplit heat pumps so both units were on the burnham for backup. On the other side of the chimney is an old winkler that has been unused since before he bought the house about 10 years ago.So I filled that just to see if it was prophlactically sidelined but it too is leaking. I suspect that means maybe the burnham was put in when the winkler went and i'm guessing that implies it might have had a 40 year service life. still short for cast iron boiler. don't know how late in time that boiler was made. its a 3 section CIR-3-WP serial # 4978.

I noticed @Steamhead was at least interested in pics of the original burner on these. This does have the original - at least its a stewart warner with unmodified bolt pattern so i presume its the original. can post pics or if anybody is interested in the burner for the museum of fossil fuel i can keep it a while and figure out how to 'forward'.

Anyway, any background on the Burnham failure issues so I can chase possible replacement appreciated; although i'm eyeing an old model but brand new pensotti in the meantime for him. I'll put up another thread so as not to hopelessly complicate this one which is already going in several directions.

Ironman

Sounds like there’s a leak somewhere in the system and fresh water’s being added.
V7s were notorious leakers. At one time, Burnham would replace it and give some labor compensation. IDK if that’s still the case.

archibald tuttle

3WRH=V7 ou non?

yeah some water and bleeding more than in some circumstances, but not perpetual. couple times a year.

water probably slightly acidic. but i've got untreated rock water (As in acid, not otherwise highly mineralized) in 50 year old cast iron boilers a few miles away and never a problem. Well one's a snowman steamer that is a least 75 years old and then i guess i'm only going on 20 with weil mclain gold so i should knock on wood when i say that.

Steamhead

How about a pic of the Winkler boiler and burner?

archibald tuttle

Steamhead said:

How about a pic of the Winkler boiler and burner?

working on it. don't know why my phone has to be so resistant to emailing a picture i got as a message. anyone got a millenial they can loan me . . .

archibald tuttle

here ya go with pics (including some ole sunstrand porn as well):

Steamhead

Not one of the classic low-pressure Winkler burners. It looks like the same burner I ran into here:

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

See if it has the same head, when you pull it.