New Yorker boiler overfilling, making noise and leaking

LetsFixThis

Would appreciate some suggestions please. My radiator glass keeps overfilling when heat works for a few hours and my radiators start banging and leaking water.

Replaced all radiators, brought in 3 different Plummers and all take money, claim they fixed the issue as water is not leaking when they are there, and leave.

I keep having to drain the water half way as the glass tube gets to the rim.

The boiler is about 3 years old.

I’m in Brooklyn NY.

Boiler brand is New Yorker

Thank you.

HVACNUT

Its possible the condensate doesn't return fast enough and the feeder kicks in before the condensate gets back to the boiler. When the condensate DOES get back, it over fills. Every cycle. I'm not too familiar with steam but maybe there's an adjustable time delay in the feeder. But the returns should be clear.

Is that a Tridicator gauge?

Jamie Hall

The way it is supposed to work on your system is the low water cutoff ("CycleGard" in the first picture) is intended to send a signal to the feeder valve (black box labelled "UniMatch"in the second picture) which is supposed to feed water to the boiler if the water is low — and then stop feeding.

At a first guess I'd look at three possibilities: slow returns tricking the low water cutoff, the low water cutoff lying to you — or that feeder sticking open.

Diagnosis isn't hard. Turn the manual feed valve — on the pipe above the water feeder valve — off and keep track of the water level for a few cycles. If your problem is slow returns, the water level in the sight glass will drop while the boiler is firing, but after the boiler stops it will recover to where it was before the boiler fired. It should recover in a minute or two, but if it takes ten or fifteen minutes you have a slow return problem and one would need to look at the piping to figure out why.

If it does recover OK eventually, you will need to see if the feeder valve has a time delay on it — but I don't think that that particular design of valve does. On the other hand, if it does recover you can run the boiler with the manual valve closed, provided you check the water level in the gauge glass from time to time and make sure that it is high enough to be safe.