A Near Death Boiler Room Story (But Funny!)

Josh_10

Tim, typically a 2" at 2 PSI. Most of my experience is with Gordon Piatt, Powerflame, and Weishaupt. They all use an Invensys 243-12 to step down the pressure to 20" or less and then a Maxitrol non-lock up to get about 2-6" on the manifold.

I can't say how much the sections weigh, but I do know that you need two guys with a 6' bar on each side to move em inch by inch. I have had to re-ring several of these. We used a gantry crane when assembling them new.

Ragu_5

True Story

I just thought of this one; maybe it could help homeowners from going beyond where they should go.

About 10 years ago, I did a massive re-piping of the local grocery store. It was 6 zones of Modines and a BIG Weil McLain boiler: the biggest they made at the time. I think it was a 9 section with a Carlin Burner firing 4.5 GPH. The boiler itself held 75 gallons. I had to crawl in to clean the darned thing.

Well, my heating engineer said that on a big unit like that, there would be no trouble hot purging the last zone. I purged that puppy and she started to spew. I saw the pressure gauge getting up to 28 PSI and I RAN for the feed valve (which was on Fast Fill, and of course, on the other side of the boiler room); but, of course, I was too late. This monster relieved (new relief valve, appropriately sized!) like nobody's business! I was lucky to get out of there alive. I can't do the math in my head, but if you have 180 degree water at 30 PSI pressure relieving into the atmosphere, you have some serious stuff going on.

Anyway, the problem was that the way out was into the deli part of the store. It was noon time on a work day, and all the other Contractors in (this small) town were buying sandwiches at the deli counter.

Actually, the REAL problem was that between the boiler room and the deli counter was that in between room called : "The Adult Video Room". Get the picture? Here I am, running for my life, and as far as all the other Contractors (at the deli counter) could see was that I was running out of the adult video room, sweating, nervous and shouting: "I almost got killed in there!".

Never have lived that one down. See yas.



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marc friedman

The big dog W-M ...

is the 94

a 9 section holds like 700 gallons

Ragu_5

Thanks, Marc...

It was a 60 series, circa 1968. Nine sections and 75 gallons of h20; big enough for me!

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Timco

How many BTUs?

Tim

Josh_10

An 18 section will give you aproximatly 6 million BTUH hot water if I am not mistaken. And I think 18 section is as big as they come with the 94. I could be wrong. That is atleast the largest I have ever worked on.

Josh_10

An 18 section will give you aproximatly 6 million BTUH hot water if I am not mistaken. And I think 18 section is as big as they come with the 94. I could be wrong. That is atleast the largest I have ever worked on.

Timco

What size gas pipe feeds this??? Is it high-pressure? Boiler weight? That is way cool....I like the picture in the library showing the people having the luncheon in the boiler.

Tim

Mark Hunt

I got to


replace an intermediate section on a 94 series a few years back. We drilled holes into the concrete floor at angles and put steel rod in the holes. To these we attached come-alongs and dragged the cracked section out.

We repeated the process on the opposite side to drag the new section in place. A tow truck lowered the new section into the mechanical room and lifted the old one out.

Put it all back together and filled it back up. NO LEAKS!!

The maintainence guys were amazed at how quickly we did this. It was the third section on the boiler to crack(cuz it's piped wrong) and the other companies took two days to do the same replacement.

The 94 is a big boiler.

Mark H

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Ragu_5

Thanks For The Tips....

I guess what I meant to say in my story was how embarrassed I was coming out of the dirty movie section of the store, all wet, sweaty and panting. It was seriously embarrassing for me.

I can't give you any more burner specs, boiler net btu outputs etc. regarding that job, because the place burned to the ground in 2004. It was an electrical fire in the attic and was NOT related to my work. There were some funny moments, though.

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