skimming for an eternity

Pete_24

I have spent a few hours skimming my new boiler (lots of wasted fuel) and still have not gotten to the point where the sight glass is clean or where I get clean water out of the skim port.

To skim the boiler, I'm skimming out of the 1 1/4 skim port by letting the burner fire, and adding just enough water to keep the cruddy water at the top pouring out. I know that I'm not supposed to keep it firing for too long, but I don't really know how long I should be leaving it firing for since I've done this for hours and still get yucky water. It seems that while it's firing I am having better luck getting the crud up because it bounces right out of the skim port.

Is it OK to drain the entire boiler and then refill it (as long as it is not too hot) or is this a bad idea because the crud will just get stuck at the bottom or in the wet returns?

I'd prefer not to use chemicals in the boiler.

My old boiler had the ability to let water out of the LWCO, but the SGO has an electronic LWCO, and no other way to get the crud out.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

--pete

Al Letellier_9

skimming

You've got a dirty system not just a dirty boiler. Let the system settle out for a week or two and then follow Weil's instructions on skimming and cleaning the boiler. That 1 1/2" tapping on the front of the boiler is a great place for a long nipple and a ball valve for a permanent place to skim. We install one on every steamer we install. Make sure that you pull and clean the probe on the LWCO after skimming and every year during annual maintenance. Be patient, that new boiler makes steam a lot quicker than your old one did and it's cleaning up your piping system. It may take a while to get it all out.

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Paul Fredricks_3

You should also try flushing out the returns. Hopefully you have drains at the end of the wet returns.

Joe Brix

If there's that much crud

You may want to look at come chem additives. I would think you could break down the oils better so they wash out with a full fush.

Ken_40

Joe's right.

The cheapest, safest and best detergent we found (over 35 years ago) is TSP; available at any decent hardware store.

Aboit one cup per 100,000 BTU's of input. Bring it to a near boil and dump, rinse and bingo, you're done.

One problem may be the pipe dope used and how much was used. We found oil-based pipe dopes leaching into the inside of the pipe puting trace amounts of "oil" in the water which causes severe priming and surging.

If it gets better, than reverts back to bad, repeat the process.

Unknown

wasted fuel?

Wasted fuel? Think how much fuel the system will be wasted if it wasn't skimmed! The entired system needed to be "steam cleaned".....

Todd_13

Make sure your returns aren't rotting out, under the insulation on my boiler I found a nasty mess, a rust spot that I touched and a hole the size of a quarter opened up. No wonder the water in the sight glass looked like red chocolate milk.

JM_2

Skimming

I am no expert, but i skimmed my boilers cold. It lets the oil come out of suspension and rise to the top. When the water gets real hot and turbulent it only makes the oil mix in with the water. I think I read that in "the lost art"