Steam boiler losing water

sinkdoc 4338

weil-mclain uses neoprene gaskets in their boilers they do tend to fail and will leak into the chamber. also check for clogged returns in basement leading back to the boiler.

Joshua Hosseinof

Steam boiler losing water

My steam boiler is losing water - right now with the cold weather and the heat on in NJ, the low water cutoff kicks in about once every 24 hours.

I've had our plumber come in, and a steam heating contractor come in twice. Both agree that the boiler itself is fine (short of taking it completely apart). It's a weil-mclain EG-45-PI from installed in 1987. The contractor ran a pressure check on all the radiators (he cranked up the boiler PSI and checked the pressure at each radiator), and so he isn't able to see any leak between the boilers and the radiators.

Also, as far as I can tell there are no buried pipes (not buried underground anyway) - some are hidden behind walls for portions of their runs however.

I've replaced most of the older air vents on the radiators. I did not replace the two main vents on the dry returns.

I've noticed some things that are out of the ordinary and hopefully people here can tell me if any of them could be the cause:

1. The near boiler piping is made of brass (not steel) - at first I thought it was copper, but then I saw brass written on the pipes - Is brass piping ok or is it as problematic as copper?
2. The wet return is only about 12 inches long - should this be longer?
3. One of the dry returns had a visible leak about 2 years ago. We had our plumber replace that section of pipe, and I now see that he replaced it with what looks to me like copper - it's about 5 feet long this section.
4. The two dry returns come from opposite directions - one of them is angled downwards (towards the main vent) more noticeably than the other dry return. We had closets built recently which enclose the dry return that does not look visibly angled downwards - Perhaps the closet walls are supporting the dry return ever so slightly so now it is not angled downwards and the condensate doesn't get back to the boiler?
5. Last possibility - could one of the return pipes be clogged up with rust and crud and blocking the water from returning to the boiler?

Any other possibilities that I've missed? Short of finding the cause of this our contractor recommended adding an automatic water feeder.

Dale

Water feeder

Adding a water feeder now is like putting an IV bag of blood into one arm while the artery bleeds out from the leg. If the water in the gauge glass rises nicely when you add water and you have no underground pipes the other usual and expensive suspect to round up is a hole at or above the water line, the old white smoke up the chimney trick. Get the boiler hot and overfill it up into the header or just below the basement ceiling and look for water dripping down the combustion chamber, if you don't see any pull off the boiler top cover and look for the leak. If you find it I would find a steam boiler expert for the new system,