How Much Overfilled can an Idle Boiler be and still light off Quietly??

JUGHNE

Have 2 boilers on common header. Spill F&T on each.
Even at -6 degrees this morning only one boiler is able to maintain 68 in schoolhouse.
2 stage tstat in use.

We are is holiday set back mode. Setting of 72 will be needed for heat on Tuesday.
Come out of set back on Monday. Feel good that it is heating at 2 ounces!
2nd boiler will have to come on to get the 72 degrees.

The idle boiler was cold this morning indicating that it had not run overnight.

The idle boiler is filling with condensate from the header as expected.
The spill is set just 2" above the NWL. Only 1/2" of empty sight glass showing on the top.
These are PB 63 series boilers.

Does this sound normal or will there be any surprises?

Jamie Hall

Cedric normally runs with only a half inch at the top of the glass showing clear when he's cold. I can't see you'll have much trouble with it.

Of course he has a whacking great drop header feeding into the steam drum from the original HB Smith to get the steam dry!

EBEBRATT-Ed

It is tough getting the spill trap in the right spot especially with today's short small boilers the gauge glasses are shorter as well

Sounds to me like you did that I think your ok.

The old rule of thumb is if you can see water in the glass it's safe to run

heating the building at 2 oz can't beat that

JUGHNE

There are 2 24" risers dropped into a 3" header that is then dropped into the 4" main common header.

Sorry for the rotation.

The 3/4" spill pipe is connected in the tee just under the 1 1/2" union on the equalizer line. From there goes to the F&T, which is passing water back into the feeder pump tank.

Might push the tstat up tomorrow morning to see how it performs that full of cold water.

Thanks for the replies.

JUGHNE

So this morning (-6) I pushed the stat up to call for 2nd stage.
The cold idle boiler had a short 1/2" of empty sight glass on top.

It fired and steamed away with no problem at all.

In less than 15 minutes the header pressure went from the 2 ounces up beyond the range of the gauge.
Looks like I need 0-3 PSI gauges. The ounce gauge is isolated by ball valve.
I do have a 0-16 HG vaporstat on the shelf. Don't know yet if this is needed.
Provisions are made to add if necessary.

Thanks again for you input.

EBEBRATT-Ed

@JUGHNE

Glad it took off without hammering. Did you have any pressure on the system with the one boiler running at -6 or was it down on it's knees? Oh, you said it ha 2oz

JUGHNE

At that 2 oz, it did maintain the building at 67 for several days.
The idle boiler brought the temp up to about 70 after maybe 2 hours.
72 is the magic number for the ladies....most of them anyway.
You know the battle.

Note: BTW, this is heating about 7000 sq ft of a 1954 building.

ethicalpaul

In my experience, the 63 series (and no doubt the 64 series) make very dry steam even with a very high water line, even without a drop header (I can see how much water is getting to the drop header in my system as you may know).

Here is a video where I made the water level go very high in order to get any carryover at all to the drop header. Even then the drop header eliminated almost all of the water getting to the riser to the main. It was most impressive.

I had to close one of the steam supplies to even see any water get past the drop header.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhUM2vRyGBE

JUGHNE

Paul, thanks for the great video.
How tall are your boiler 2" risers and what size of header did you use?

Does your wife ever wonder what you are doing in the basement so much?