boiler water level one month later.. good bad or average?

skimmer

Burnham IN4

Nov 25th water level, I had a small leak at the valve stem nut on 1 radiator:

Dec 1 water level after fixing steam leak a few days prior:

Today Dec 28 water level. Had a few cold 15 degree days last week. 31 days after stem leak repaired:

EzzyT

That is bad. There’s definitely other leaks maybe from other valve packing nuts or vents. The worst would be the boiler having a leak above the normal water line. One way to see if boiler has a leak is to flood it and see if you see water dripping onto the burner tubes.

skimmer

Boiler is 4 years old.. I hope not.. I dont hear a leak like the last boiler that developed a hole or see white smoke from the chimney

It could be my wet return..a portion of it is hidden behind a wall..

Or my hot water loop? a tiny bit of it, a few feet is buried in concrete.

I dont hear any other leaks in the house.

skimmer

correction.. I do have one bathroom radiator that was leaking bad.. I closed the valve all the way to disconnect the radiator. Now i barely hear it, if its quiet enough.. nothing like it was a few years ago..

Im not sure it any steam is escaping or if i just hear it at the valve.. I dont see any wetness.. Maybe I will test with a mirror or spoon.

EBEBRATT-Ed

@skimmer if you can hear it it's probably leaking. You can't see steam. You can only see water vapor as the steam cools. A couple of small leaks can loose a lot of water

Long Beach Ed

Your water usage seems a little high - actually typical of what I find out there. I would try to tighten up the system the best I can. Depending on your water quality, excessive makeup water can quickly destroy a Burnham IN-4.

Tighten the packing nuts on every radiator valve. Snug up the gauge glass packing nuts. Make certain all your radiator and main vents close when steam hits them. Just one leaking will easily waste that much water in 15 degree weather.

If that doesn't help, I'd remove and plug each vent tapping and pressurize the system with air. The leaks will sing like a tea kettle.

skimmer

@EBEBRATT-Ed this was leaking bad a few years ago, so i closed the valve. Now i can barely hear it, so i think a little bit maybe pushing thru. I thought it had stopped leaking when I shut the valve it was that much of a difference (no more hissing)

its in a bad spot. some knucklehead years ago took out the standing wall radiator and put in this short rad along the wall one.

It wasnt even pitched right, as you can see I had to prop it up when I purchased the house, as the the rad would gurgle and spit out water and then eventually stop working.

So at the moment the valve is closed tight, and now I removed the pipe that was providing pitch to "help" in stopping the steam.

As you can see, this packing nut is in a difficult spot for me to get too. I dont want to mess with it now. But i suspect if Im loosing water it may be here.. But is that enough to make the water level drop like that in a month? Its probably a gallon.

Long Beach Ed

Those Heat Timer Vari-Vents allow quite a bit of steam to escape before closing. Systems using them tend to need more makeup water than average. If it's 15 degrees out, that is contributing to your usage.

skimmer

@Long Beach Ed I didnt know that But I have this valve closed off due to the stem leak. So this rad is closed off

skimmer

Well my auto filler refilled today. Added 2 gallons.

From Nov 28 to Jan 3. 2 gallons of make up water to a 6.5 gallon capacity IN4

there were some warm days that it didn’t run at all

I don’t know where this water loss is coming from. Can a small leak or two cause that?

109A_5

Off topic a bit, but I don't think that valve is for steam.

That's the only vent like this in the system ?

Long Beach Ed

If you check the system for leaks with air pressure, you will know for sure if this is as good as it's going to get. Otherwise you'll never really know.

I have several systems that I've checked to be completely free of leaks and some perform like yours. The Heat Timer vents are a little slow to close and emit more steam than many others.

skimmer

@109A_5 yes that’s the only vent like that in the entire system. The rest are hoffman or gortons.

I’m not surprised. That was a bathroom renovation where the recessed tall radiator was removed and replaced with the low radiator was installed in its placed

When I bought the home it would work for a couple of cycles and then spit water. Because it was pitched wrong. So I was able to prop it up and get it to work. until it started leaking at the valve a few years ago

dopey27177

In a one pipe steam heating system typically losing 1/2" of water on the gauge glass is acceptable.

A lot of the water loss is attributable to packing glands on radiators and the type of vent valves on the radiators.

Even when you do not see steam vapors the air leaving the system is moist and carries water vapor with it.

If you had a boiler water leak you would know it as you had a boiler leaking before.

Jake

skimmer

1/2" per what? per month?

I just discovered something. I had adjusted my pressuretrol last month as shown in the picture, and I thought it was working well.. I replaced the gauge with a used one i purchased on ebay and it was working well.

Well just now I fired her up from 67 to 71 to listen for leaks.. and then i noticed the pressure gauge went to 7 before cutting out..

I raised the main up a bit to a little above 2 and the next cycle it cut out at about 5.

I guess I have to check the pigtail and the pressure gauge pipe

skimmer

so it turns out my old pressuretrol was not operating properly and running the boiler at higher pressures then I had it set for.

switched to a vaporstat and I will see if it makes a difference

mattmia2

You need a low pressure gauge too. Those 30 psi gauges can be very inaccurate, especially at a couple psi.

Open the valve on that fin tube and see if a lot of water comes back, it may be leaking steam past the valve that then condenses in the radiator and can't drain back.

109A_5

So if you don't have an oversized boiler, why was the pressure so high ? The pressuretrol is a pressure limit device only. It limits the pressure by shutting off the burner.

skimmer

@109A_5 I don’t know. I mean it’s the in4 the next one down is the in3. This one puts out 295 sq ft if steam. I believe the in3 is 158

I have 6 radiators and a 7th turned off plus what looks like 2 inch main running 30 feet across the basement.

2 story house.