ME

Alan(CaliforniaRadiant)Forbes

Mark:

Awhile back, I posted a thread about one of our jobs where we were having problems getting rid of air from one of the old cast iron radiators. It happened to be in the master bedroom and was driving the wife nuts; she was not humored by our "babbling brook, no charge" diversionary tactics.

You suggested injecting dishwashing detergent into the system and I tried it last week along with taking the pressure up to 30 psi. By jove, it worked right away; went upstairs and the radiator was still. The owner brought up a beer (he had wine) and we sat on the floor to see if the noise would return: nada.

Thanks for the tip.

Best wishes,

Alan



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Jim_5

How and why does this work? Is anything bad going to happen later. I'm always ineterested to learn new cures for service call problems

Alan(CaliforniaRadiant)Forbes

I think

the soap would break the natural surface tension of the water and allow they bubbles to become infused in the liquid and be carried away.

Problems in the future? I may have used more than I should have; half a bottle of Palmolive liquid in a gravity conversion; big (3") mains mean large water content, so we might be OK.

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hr

depends on

the ratio. Soap is very alkline, Thats how it cuts grease and cleans your dishes! To much will attack your metals.

How much is too much, is a good question.

I suspect a squirt in a 50 or more gallon capacity system would not cause long term harm.

Leaving a cleaning dose of TSP or any hydronic cleaner in a system too long and it starts eating away the metals.

Ever spray soap on black iron gas pipe to find leaks? Come back a week later and check it out!

hot rod

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bob_25

Alkaline

Triad boiler used to put a tablespoon of TSP in every boiler before it shiped. They said it was to counteract the acidity from soldering flux. I always wondered how effective it was because by the time you filled and purged the system I wouldn't think there would be much left. bob

Mark Hunt

Oh for cryin out loud


this method of air removal has been around for years HR.

A couple of squirts of "Joy" is not going to destroy the system.

It's ok.

Mark H

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Mark Eatherton1

Oh Bubbles...

they work fantastic. Gotta give credit where credits due. A guy named Len Rosek taught me that trick when I was doing roof mounted closed loop solar systems. Worked like a champ then, works like a champ now. It's a surfactant. It breaks up bubbles and makes the water wetter:-) If there's some kind of reaciton occuring inside the system, it may be neccesary to dose it more than once, but in most cases, 1 does will do it.

Check the pH on the system. If its more than 9, dilute the system till it gets down to around 8.5 Thats ideal for common system metals. Not good for aluminum, but then again, the pH that aluminum requires is probably not good for the other components in the system. Catch 22.

Glad it worked for you Alan!

Happy Surfactant Hydronicing on a Friday Night here on The Wall!!

ME

Mark Eatherton1

I just remembered...

a little invention I made up for doing exactly that. It was a 3 gallon pneumatic paint pot. It had a clear hose female connection on it and you could put the soap inside, drain boiler water back into it, shake it up to mix it, and inject the solution back into the system using compressed air.

Gotta keep an eye on the clear hose and shut it off if you see air. Was a heck of a lot easier than the hand pump I currently use. Think I'll make some up for injecting checmicals into systems:-)

ME