Auto Feeder

Autumn

I recently had a low water cutoff and auto feeder installed on my pennco steam boiler. My auto feeder is very inconsistent and randomly over feeds water to the system past the fill line. I’ve had the technicians come and rewire the system, and skim my boiler and it still keeps happening. I feel like just saying take the feeder out and just leave the low cutoff by itself. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I’m at the point where I don’t feel comfortable leaving my house as I’m afraid the system will overfill and flood. 

Jamie Hall

What make and model autofeeder? Some of the better ones -- the VXT for example -- allow you to set the delay time on feeding and also the amount fed. They do this for a reason -- the characteristics of each system regarding feeding are different.

If you have a feeder which allows those two settings, try setting the delay on feed time to a longer value -- you can make an estimate as to what it should be by observing how long it takes the water level to recover in the boiler after the boiler shuts down. Also set it to feed a specific amount of water -- try 1 gallon as a first approximation.

Letting the autofeeder feed immediately on low water, and letting it feed until it switches, is almost guaranteed to create an overfill at times on smaller boilers.