Drained too much from the boiler

Timco

Pretty easy to re-fill to 12#, but easier with pictures of the fill assy/boiler piping. Any chance of pictures?

Tim

Gabe_2

Drained too much from the boiler

I was trying to purge air out of my hot water baseboard heater. There are no bleeders on the radiators. So I opened the drain valve on my boiler. I think I drained too much because there is no water circulating through the pipes now and the pump sounds like it is pumping constantly. The water is not refilling either. Any ideas as to how I could fix this. I ended up shutin off the heat because I think the pump was starting to burn up.

Gordy

Shut it down!

I would shut the boiler down until you get the water level back up to proper fill. This could be a dangerous situation to you, and your boiler, depending on how much water was drained!

There should be a cold water feed to your boiler with a pressure reducing valve. There is a shut off valve before the pressure reducing valve it is either closed, or the PRV is plugged. Open the shut off valve, you should see the pressure gauge start to rise, and here water going into the system. Make sure you do this after the boiler is SHUT DOWN, and has COOLED DOWN to room temp.

Gordy

Gabe_2

I did shut it down. I don't have pictures, it is an older boiler,

Gordy

Good deal

Good you shut it down re read my post, and see if you can find the cold water feed. Once you get it up to 12 psi you will have to bleed the base board. In these pics its the 1/2" pipe that goes into the boiler, and compression tank. The gold thing is the PRV there should be a valve before this. Open it up.


Gordy

Gabe_2

In this picture, is the black pipe coming out the right of the boiler the cold water feed.

WaterHeaterGuy

No it's the 1/2 copper pipe running along the back wall. If you follow it to the left, you can barely make out the auto-fill that is being partially obscured by the vent hood.

Gabe_2

OKk how do I bleed the baseboard? This is what got me into this mess to begin with. There are no bleeder valves on the baseboards.

Gordy

Kind of baseboard

There should be a bleeder on your base boards somewhere. some are on top and need a key wrench to open and close the vent. Some are hidden behind a cover.

When you find it you need to crack open the vent , and you should here air hiss out of it. When water spirts out close the vent, and move on to the next one. Start at the lowest floor closest to the boiler first then work your way around away from the boiler, and up to the next floor. Be sure to check your system pressure so there is pressure at all times not going above 20 psi.

Your PRV should do this for you if it is not plugged, and you have the main shut off open for this. But just keep an eye on the pressure after doing some bleeding.I think you need to get a professional in there to do this for you, and do a boiler inspection since it is an older unit.

Gordy