How much does water quality actually affect the lifespan of modern condensing boilers?

AllShorePlumbingNY

There's plenty of discussion about annual maintenance schedules but not much about how water quality affects long term reliability
For those servicing condensing boilers regularly. how often are you finding problems that trace back to poor system water rather than the boiler itself?
Do you routinely recommend inhibitors or system flushing on new installs or only after problems start showing up?

hot_rod

I think it all depends on the quality of the water that is used for the initial fill. After that little is any additional water should enter the system.

There is water standard that was developed through IAMPO/ ANSI, H1001-1 All the installation manuals have fill water requirements.

Clean the system after installation or repair, with a hydronic cleaner. Use water that meets the spec, add a conditioner.

Axiom has deionizer cartridges for one time or multiple use, an inexpensive way to assure the best operation.

Very few places in the U.S. have boiler ready water coming out of the faucet, hardness and TDS are easy to measure at the site.

Systems with tiny leaks are probably the ones that destroy boilers quickly. Today’s boilers are very thin metal they don’t take the abuse that a cast boiler can handle.

It is a simple step to assure your customers investment is being protected and warranty maintained.

hot_rod

Even a thin scale coating starts hitting the efficiency also.

EdTheHeaterMan

I have not had any problem with mt Mod-Con boiler. It's working great and my water quality is really bad.

Well maybe there is a little problem from time to time. But I think is still works great.

GGross

"how often are you finding problems that trace back to poor system water rather than the boiler itself?"

I almost NEVER trace a problem back to the boiler itself, for every no heat call that is due to a boiler part failure there are 10 that are due to system related issues. Poor water quality won't be the cause of the bulk of no heat calls so "how often" isn't a great metric, we would need to lump them by cost. How much does a failed zone valve motor cost VS the cost of a whole new boiler? Water related issues rarely manifest themselves in simply a minor symptom, they manifest as catastrophic failure (see above photos)

"Do you routinely recommend inhibitors or system flushing on new installs or only after problems start showing up?"

The installers I sell to recommend flushing, treatment, disconnecting autofills in favor of a controlled system feeder, magnetic dirt separation, for every install. This is pretty much par for the course where I am at, with just a couple of installers willing to cheap out on these details to pocket the difference. Recommending these items AFTER a problem arises (which remember is almost always a catastrophic failure) makes you look pretty bad, sell it upfront, more importantly just complete the install correctly, this includes paying attention to the specific conditions on each job which always includes system fluid