water level in Peerless boiler question

Chris Bain

At the bottom of the wet return, or my Hartford loop, is a faucet, about an inch from the ground. Can I clean out the sludge in my wet return by emptying it from there?

Chris Bain

one pipe steam

Coming home tonight, I heard banging for the first time out of my one pipe system. I looked at the water level in the tube, which was overly full a few days ago (which I had lowered) and it was again completely maxed out. Turned it off, dumped about 10 gallons into buckets until the water level dropped to halfway down the tube. Turned it back on and it seemed to fire up OK. Then the McDonnell intake valve on top starting making a racket, and when I looked, the red manual release on top was poppping up and down, and I noticed the glass had been refilled. Ughhhhh.... what gives? And am I safe to run this thing tonight?

will smith_4

One possibility

Is that your wet returns are plugged up. When your boiler cycles, steam leaves the boiler through the main, heads out to the radiators, condenses, then (when things are good), slides back through the wet return line, into the Hartford loop, back into the boiler. What can happen over time is that the wet return gets plugged up, and slows down the condensate returning to the boiler. Your fresh water make-up only sees that the water level is dropping, and adds fresh water. After some time, the condensate final creeps back into the boiler, which is why you would see a higher water level: the original plus the new fresh water. If this is the case, you've gotta fix it-continuous feeding of fresh water will ruin your boiler in short order. Hope this helps.

Chris Bain

That's certainly logical. I'll call a pro first thing in the morning... any thought on whether its safe to run it tonight (it's in the 20's out there)... I have a second boiler (baseboard) heating the extension, so we'll make do if we have to...