These LGB's suffered

Tom51

Take a gander at these images.
If I am correct, they were loaded with chemicals, over filled and cooked and then dry fired.
The gaskets were melted between the sections in most cases and the ignition controls were melted off and hanging

Anyone seen this before?

mattmia2

It definitely dry fired but you'd need to look carefully to figure out if that was a cause or an effect. Did the controls let it fire when the water was gone for some reason or did the valves or the controls get stuck and boil the water away faster than it could be replaced(or not try to replace it depending on how it was controlled).

Jamie Hall

I'd really want to get at the root cause of what happened -- since you were very very close to a real catastrophe and you don't want it to happen again...

mattmia2

Jamie Hall said:

I'd really want to get at the root cause of what happened -- since you were very very close to a real catastrophe and you don't want it to happen again...

Maybe those places that require a smoke or heat detector in the boiler room connected to a gas shutoff valve are onto something.

Tom51

All great thoughts, we enetered this space for the first time about 4 weeks ago to find what you see.
As we removed the boilers, the pads were is awful condition.
They are being replaced this week.
The flues at the breech were also incorrect.

The boilers will be treated with care and started and flushed until we are running clear.
They will be skimmed and treated as required.

ScottSecor

Looks like lack of maintenance. I'm guessing an abundance of make up water for the long time (leaks in system or even boiler). The melted red rubber gasket material is not that unusual, we see it often when removing steam or sometimes water boilers with this type of gasket. We normally use the green hard gaskets, something like below. It appears that the boiler was leaking or condensing for a long time when I look at the back of the boiler near the base.

https://www.supplyhouse.com/Matco-Norca-GFFNA6-6-Full-Face-Non-Asbestos-Gasket?utm_source=google_ad&utm_medium=Shopping_withoutdata&utm_campaign=Shopping_Without_PLTV_data&gclid=CjwKCAjwvrOpBhBdEiwAR58-3K2cT_0JY-qw2LjgrM-zawjd3ltWu6dAP-RRJO9kcUlydkHxBNeY8RoCw6QQAvD_BwE

Tom51

Yes, lack of service and tons of water went tru these boilers. There is a great deal of work goin on right now to protect the replacements.

Tom51

The cause(s) of this near catastrophic had several contributing factors.
1- The boilers would constantly flood. The question was how? After we had corrected a number of issues, we had steam up and found that when the boilers cycled on pressure that there was a vacuum low enough to induce a siphon from the feed tank even though the piping was 10 feet in the air. This vacuum filled the boiler. A couple of checks for vacuum breakers took care of that.

2- The return lines were almost 100 percent plugged. Lots of cutting and piping were done to clear the returns in the boiler room.

3- There were a mass amount of leaks in the system, both steam and condensate. Most have been addressed.

4- The vac pumps that controlled flow to the feed tank were working at about 10 percent when there was water that returned. The piping has been repaired but the controls will still require rewiring.

5- Currently operation on the reset control and maintain the building at 68=70’f

6- The system MUW has been very low and the chem is maintaining PH and TDS without much effort.

7- The former MUW bills had to be massive.

8- New pads were poured as the old pads were broken up pretty well

9- From start to finish, about 6 weeks time. It was a miracle that there were two LGB13 boilers in town, that the weather held off and that we could make parts work until OEM parts show up.

Mad Dog_2

Definitely a Candidate for Independent duel LWCOs.  This is the main reason I prefer Burnham to the others that use the elastomeric, section gaskets:  In the epic battle between fire 🔥 Hot  Iron, Steam and Rubber..Rubber loses everytime!  Mad Dog  🐕 🤣 

WMno57

Nice work. Hopefully the owners learned a lesson about maintenance and will retain you to care for their new equipment.

EBEBRATT-Ed

Definitely too much Mu water killed those boilers. Nothing will kill a boiler and plug up the returns like Mu water. Too bad they ignored it.

Finally, the boiler plugs with sludge, the LWCOs fail because of sludge.

As my old boss used to say. "you can't burn up a section with water in it"

Mad Dog_2

Ed Bratt...on point 👌 as usual.  Matty NYC