It happened.

Lard

Whooda thunk years of makeup water (70k gallons/year!) would rot a boiler? The leak is in a section not replaced in 2016.

I finally got a chance to do an overfill test this morning , even though “I already knew” per the meter data. Water line leak confirmed.

I noticed an uptick in usage beginning in December, but it was small and there were a few surging incidents that burped some water from vents...
I got rid of the other leaks and consumption still went up to unacceptable levels then dropped when I put the transducer/timer on—uh oh, a direct correlation to burn time!

Meter log:  first spike was an initial fill after mucking-out, was brought online that day. Last spike is the overfill test. The drop in the middle Is when the IFMStat/timer was installed.

to put this leak in perspective, and to see what caused this rot, see graph below:

This only shows a snippet of the prior leakage, it ended winter 2018/19 at 70,000 gallons and had that return leak for years prior.

Considering that this thing is grossly oversized and piped wrong, time for a replacement this summer. Methinks a Weil Mclain 780 in lieu of the 1180. This 80 died early, but for taking on probably >300,000 gallons of makeup in its life, it was a champ!

EBEBRATT-Ed

If you have any wet returns they will also be toast

ratio

@Lard, I don't recall if you mentioned it before, but what are you using for logging & graphing?

Lard

EBEBRATT-Ed said:

If you have any wet returns they will also be toast

The returns were redone Summer 2019 in copper, as that was the source of the insane leakage.  Not one bit of condensate was making it back to the feed tank- it was one-pass. The boiler held for a while, but I knew there was damage from all that oxygen.

ratio said:

@Lard, I don't recall if you mentioned it before, but what are you using for logging & graphing?

The metering system is an EKM Omnimeter.  It uses a hall-effect sensor on a regular nutating disc meter and logs both locally and to a very basic web interface. Having two years of data has been great for keeping track of things.  I have a 1hz heartbeat connected to another input to monitor/log burn time.

Lard

Here is a snapshot I made in march ‘19.  January alone was just over 12,000 gallons.  Not many believed there was a major leak until this logging system was installed.

Jamie Hall

Well, stuff does happen, to the best of us. I applaud the choice of the 780 Weil-McClain -- Cedric is a580, and runs and heats just as a good boiler should. And that it lasted as well as it did, leaking like that, is a real testimony. About the only thing that can go wrong with them to shorten the life is getting the o-rings twisted when you draw the sections together...

Lard

Jamie Hall said:

Well, stuff does happen, to the best of us. I applaud the choice of the 780 Weil-McClain -- Cedric is a580, and runs and heats just as a good boiler should. And that it lasted as well as it did, leaking like that, is a real testimony. About the only thing that can go wrong with them to shorten the life is getting the o-rings twisted when you draw the sections together...

I knew Cedric was a fellow 80, though fired on oil, correct? The 780 gives around 200 surplus EDR in our case, but we plan to add some radiation to the basement now that there is a return pump available. Weil seems to be the go-to around here and though firing with gas, want to stay wet-base.

I am too familiar with rolled O-rings. In Weil’s case, they are technically square rings which are superior to o-rings for this static sealing application but as noted, they will twist .  They can be downright terrifying on high-pressure hydraulics if the faces and grooves are not mated correctly. The first time I popped one during a 4,400psi test as a dumb apprentice, I thought someone had fired a gun next to me. The viton sealing ring was extruded into paper thin fragments, as were my underwear.

Jamie Hall

Cheer up, @Lard -- I burst a hydraulic fitting at 3,000 psi on a 500 horse drilling rig one fine day. Turned a water well job into a haz waste site in about 20 seconds. Amazing how fast that puppy emptied the reservoir... the stuff is slippery, too.

Lard

Jamie Hall said:

Cheer up, @Lard -- I burst a hydraulic fitting at 3,000 psi on a 500 horse drilling rig one fine day. Turned a water well job into a haz waste site in about 20 seconds. Amazing how fast that puppy emptied the reservoir... the stuff is slippery, too.

I could tell hydraulic disaster stories for ages.  It truly is amazing how fast they dump, especially when accumulators are involved.  We had a 1 1/2” 2000psi hose let go due to a bad parker crimp and the 200 gallon reservoir and accumulator contents ended up dripping from the 25’ ceiling in seconds.  My german boss simply laughed and said the oil makes your skin soft.

back to boilers, should I consider a DHW/tankless/tankless section and indirect to serve the commercial dishwasher? The current 70k BTU, 75-gallon tank simply does not keep up. For tankless, It would be easy to have it only on when using the dishwasher roughly twice a week. The 75 gallon is otherwise oversized for the two sinks it serves.