love that dirty water...................

Mike Kraft_2

Just wondering.I see the pros treating,flushing and buying water for closed systems.I must say I am a closet polluter of my hydronic systems.This is becoming more and more troublesome in my, yet,later adulthood installer conscientious woild.The pressures that my fellow hydronic installers lay upon me will peer me into yet another level of hydronicing.

I have'nt actually witnessed any premature deaths or failures of valves,zone valves,circs,boilers etc.No doubt extreme conditions can and will affect these components.

I did recently see a chain reaction freeze-up.Started as a call to local oil co.(from the client) for a run away zone.Seem the ZV would'nt close.Apparrently the actual valve would'nt seat.The culprit was a very fine white sand.it accumulated in the valve body.

The oilman pulled the ball out and replaced with new on the fly.The system was unfortunately installed with no isolation valves,air purge device (manual or automatic)other than one #66 maid-o-mist and bleeders on the HWBB(3 floors,3 zones).Each zone was a split feed and the splits were buried and no valves for balance(needed).The repair was made and some superficial key bleeding and throught he next 2 days the air accumulated and froze in an entry.I fixed.

Long winded.My curiosity was where did the sand come from?It is a private well and there is a softener installed on the domestic.Keeping in mind this is a closed system that has been up and running for 8 years or better.

Garber has a new filter system for resy boilers.But a strainer seems better.Or Spirotherm has a filter with a blow down better yet.I do'nt see many of these installed on typical systems.Is this considered for older gravity systems with large iron mains and emitters.Or something that any system would benefit from?

cheese.........http://www.spirotherm.com/residential/

Unknown

Clean & treat that boiler water

Hi Mike,

The chemistry of water is commonly overlooked by most hydronic professionals. I've just started using Rhomar cleaner and conditioner and intend to continue using it on every boiler I put in. Why? Because it's the right thing to do. I see water problems becoming more and more troublesome with the use of low mass boilers with small passages. Not as thick as CI. I've seen what "plain" water does to closed loop systems. No such thing as pure water from the typical tap.

Not sure how the sand found it's way into the system and into the zone valve? WYE strainer is an inexpensive option I would strongly concider when dealing with sand. Any system would benefit from a strainer. Few really call for them though. SpiroTrap JR looks like a fine solution to the problem you described though I've never seen one.

Gary

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hr

It came from somewhere

I doubt the boiler or pipe was shipped with it Generally it's the fill water. Softners don't necessarily trap fine sand or sediment.

But, is the system taking on fill water, or could it be from the initial fill?

In either case it should be flushed out! If the fill water is questionable, install a fine micron (sand and sediment)filter on the fill line. Or bring some good water from home.

The hydronic system cleaners probably won't "lock up" this type of a problem. Most are soap or acid based, I doubt they would dissolve sand?

hot rod

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