Water treatment help needed

ScottSecor

We have been taking care of the heat at this senior citizen complex for forty years. They have gone from Smith 28 series water oil fired hot water boilers, to gas fired Munchkins to the current condensing boilers. The boilers we just installed are Crown Velocity with Giannoni style water tube heat exchangers.

We flushed the four heating zones thoroughly with city water. The boilers are piped with primary secondary. We installed brass strainers on each of the two boilers. We installed large magnetic cleaning filters on each of the four 1.5" copper return pipes.

We started the new boilers Thursday night and after about a half hour of warming the system up and purging any additional air we decided to check the boiler strainers and the four magnetic filters. All of them we loaded with sediment (I suspect magnetite and iron). We ran the system another hour while cleaning up the room and checked the boiler strainers again, filthy. Checked the magnets again, loaded. We returned yesterday, same conditions. Again this morning, loaded.

We are looking to clean the system and prevent damaging the new boilers. The Munchkins we just removed were loaded with sediment. We are almost certain all of the piping is copper. We are almost certain of the heat emitters are made of brass and copper. The only known ferrous materials are the two boiler pumps, the two system pumps, and the steel hydraulic separator.

We guestimate the system holds between 200 and 250 gallons of water. Hoping for suggestions on readily available cleaning treatments. We are considering CLR, vinegar, TSP, etc. Commercially available chemicals are an option, but large quantities are hard to come by on a Saturday.

Thank you.

hot_rod

if it sticks to a magnet it is magnetite or hematite soap or strong hydronic cleaners will not dissolve that

What you need is a lot if flow, a high gpm purge to push the heavy sediment out. I have used dishwasher soap, it doesn’t suds up like other soaps and cause cavitation The soap breaks down any oil, flux, etc that binds the magnetite into lumps

Do you have a pump cart, or buy transfer pump, pr 1/2 jp sump pump to get some goid glow rate

ScottSecor

Makes sense. No cart, but we have a high volume utility pump.

Coincidentally, when we fitst t

urned on system pumps we must have freed up a piece of solder. You can hear what sounds like a marble inside one of the four 1.5" copper returns. It's so annoying that were considering adding a full size to this return.

IMG_20261031_103428.jpg

IMG_20261031_103420.jpg

IMG_20261031_103413.jpg

EBEBRATT-Ed

833-244-2905

Rosedale Filtration

Water treatment and filtering is not in my lane.

But I have bought some filters from them and they seemed very knowledgeable about how to clean up a system

Might be worth a call. We cleaned up a glycol system that had magnetite. This back before magnetic filters were a thing. They were very helpful.

ScottSecor

Thank you Bob and Ed.

My son cut out a section of copper return pipe that had the "marble" sound resonating. It was actually an acorn nut from the original Bell & Gossett circulator (pre 2001). Could have been us or even someone from the maintenance staff.