soft water w/ steam...

kevin coppinger_4

me awhile back that the subject of softened water and steam boilers came up...generally speaking this is a bad mix...correct? I am looking at a job where the Ho has gone through2 V-7's in 13 years...sounds like the water is eating away the boiler at the water line....kpc

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kevin coppinger_4

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Christian Egli_2

Restaurants serve water with twist of lemon

Typically, declawed water is safer to play with than with what comes out of the wild. Commercial boilers and particularly process steam boilers are often fed nothing but treated water.

Nonetheless, your gnawing corrosion problem might be related to your water softener.

For instance, I don’t like boilers and water softeners sleeping together in the same room; it‘s a disturbing sight. The regenerating salt that is in storage there, and invariably spilled around, ends up poking hideous rust holes in the nice boiler jackets and everything else, including the metal innards of any of your appliances.

Next, your softener regenerating cycle might not work well enough and you get too much salt introduction into the fresh water supply. Once inside the boiler, this all turns into a hot salty soup that will burn holes through everything.

If you live in a swamp, and all you get is naturally super soft swamp water that is loaded with sulfur and nitric compounds, who knows what kinds of monsterous metal eating acids you’ll eventually breed within your boiler.

All I can think of is to get your water softening machine tested... repaired... adjusted and get a cocktail of chemical supplements to ensure your future boiler is properly vitaminated. Have pH levels been tested regularly?

Restaurants mess around adding lemon slices in their water while the rest of us at home just drink the stuff as it comes out the tap. Likewise, residential steam heating does not need to depend on softened water - providing you don't go through pitchers and pitchers of water every day. It's just a nice frill that often proves cumbersome.

Is there also the possibility that you have galvanic corrosion going on?