Burnham 5014N cracks

Chubs

We installed a knockdown 5014 about 4 years ago for a biomedical laboratory and yesterday were called out for water on the boiler room floor. This was installed by my guys, and drawdown bolts torqued per instructions. We have assembled dozens of sectional boilers with little to no issues. This boiler is used through a couple different exchangers for different processes. Sometimes it runs for days or weeks, other times it sits for a month. There is a competent chemical treatment company locally that controls dosing and they have had no issues with treatments or water quality. The boiler was skimmed properly and filled initially with RO water from the facility.

The facility was not in use for the last couple months, and yesterday after opening up the jacket, one of our maintenance guys found that almost every section was cracked on the bottom. Anyone have any major red flags as to why this 3.5 year old boiler would have this type of failure?




Thanks in advance,

CHUB

Intplm.

Was this a wet layup for the last couple of months? Any chance that it froze? Any incorrect boiler chemicals used?

EBEBRATT-Ed

Your not going to like this answer.

Need to see more of the boiler header and piping. The riser going straight up into the bottom of the header is not good. The steel expands at a different rate than the cast iron. That stress can crack a boiler. Especially one that goes from a cold start often and has multiple risers. Go back and look at the install manual it will not show it piped that way

A welded header is ok and pretty much has to be used on a larger boiler. It's how you pipe the risers into it that matters. You have to use swing joints with threaded pipe into threadolets in the header. The header must be offset from the risers a few feet. (the more the better)

Chubs

It was wet layup, I'm going to do some investigation on freezing potential. I'll also get photos of the drums onsite! Thanks for bringing that up, I hadn't thought of a freeze-up. The building has a few roof top units (as this is only for process heating), but the mech room does have combustion air louvres. I appreciate the different angles!

EBEBRATT-Ed

As far as freezing goes if the mechanical room is in negative with the boiler shut down cold air coming down the flue could crack it.