Water Feeders for Burham V8 Boilers

Neil Andrews

I just received an estimate from an oil company for a new boiler replacement.

They want to install a Burham V8 boiler, but they will not install an auto water feeder, because they say that Burham does not recommend it and it will flood the boiler.

Is this fact true? I have been on Burham's site, I don't see any mentioned of auto water feeders.

I have a water feeder on my old boiler and would like to have one on the replacement boiler for peace of mind.

Thanks

Neil

Unknown

Assuming this is steam ?

We also do not recommend auto feeders for steam because most homeowners will assume the system does not need to be looked over every week . Which it does if you have a float type low water cutoff . And the auto feeder keeps only the minimum amount of water in the boiler , not the recommended level . Not to mention the off chance of the auto feeder sticking open ( although I haven't seen one fail that way ) .

For peace of mind , I would ask the contractor to install 2 low water cutoffs .

Unknown

Neil

The use of automatic water feeders on our boilers is discussed in the Installation and Operation Manual that is shipped with the boiler. It basically addresses the issue of possible excessive amounts of makeup water being introduced to the boiler in the event of some leak in the system. We provide a chart of acceptable makeup water amounts per boiler and we state that large unmonitored amounts of oxygenated water to any boiler can lead to premature failure. There are now water feeders with electronic metering capabilities and readouts. Here is one of them from HydroLevel. The I&O manual is viewable and downloadable from our website. Hope this helps.

Glenn Stanton

Burnham Hydronics