8 way foam

TKPK · December 12

I have been working on my water quality and slowly raising it to 10. I did a flush and refilled with distilled and got it in the 8-9 pH before starting this process.

I take daily samples and replace the sample with the same amount of distilled and a bit of 8-way, about a quart each time.

Over 2 weeks the sediment has been coming down, clarity and pH up. Yesterday the behavior was completely different with pressure in 2.5” water where 1” was normal.

I believe I am now getting surging as my equalizer is now getting as hot as the riser in the burn cycle and for the first time I am seeing some foam in the sight glass.

I think I will drop the pH back to 8-9 by replacing a couple of gallons with straight distilled water

edit: I pulled out three gallons of boiler water and replaced it with 3 gallon of distilled and it is back to semi-normal. The pH still shows high but the equalizer is staying in 160F range.

It seemed like there was an uncontrolled buffer reaction going on as the pH tested higher as I was diluting (pulled 2 gallons and replaced, pulled another gallon and replaced)

original water, oxygenated water from a tap on my makeup loop, water pulled in this cycle

ethicalpaul · December 12

Good job keeping a close eye on your system.

I have never seen suds like that and I have (for science) put way way too much 8-way into my boiler at one point.

I can tell you that in my experience, 8-way doesn't foam like that on its own but it could certainly be interacting with something in your boiler.

I don't know what an uncontrolled buffer reaction is, since a buffer tends to hold the pH at a given level, but my unrequested advice would be to keep the amount of 8-way on the lower end to let the oxide or other contaminant make its way out of the drain via periodic small flushes (like a quart or less). And probably not daily. Give the stuff a chance to settle out, try weekly or even monthly for a bit. As long as your pH is above 8 I think you'll have a great reduction in mud generation.

And having said all that, a little surging to your header is not a major catastrophe…a lot of people here think that it's normal. I know it's not normal because of my sight glasses.

TKPK · December 12

by uncontrolled buffer reaction I meant no matter how much I diluted the water the pH remained the same or actually increased. I replaced 3 of the ~8.5 gallons in my system and there was little to no impact on pH.

I started this whole process with a Squick treatment about a month ago (and then watched your Squick vid). Boiler has been flushed (2x) and skimmed and I still see some of that floating around too.

I also did some very minor plumbing work (better antlers for vents and new pigtail tree for pressuretrol and magnahelic)

I felt like I had to make a big change (3 gallon) because the boiler was really misbehaving. I think that might have been enough. Will stick to the quarts for awhile.

thanks for the advice and vids

ethicalpaul · December 12

by uncontrolled buffer reaction I meant no matter how much I diluted the water the pH remained the same or actually increased. I replaced 3 of the ~8.5 gallons in my system and there was little to no impact on pH.

Gotcha, thanks. Yeah I would call that "expected buffer behavior" — that's what buffers do

You might try another skim in case you have some more oils that made there way down to the boiler or were still in there from the last skim.

and when you do a skim you will end up flushing a few gallons anyway to get your waterline back down so it makes for a nice cleanout.

Jamie Hall · December 12

That's not an uncontrolled buffer reaction — that's exactly what buffers do. The whole idea, in fact! What gets really fun is when you finally exceed the buffering capacity of your solution — and the pH soars off in one direction or another.

delcrossv · December 12

I've never seen 8 way go bright red like that. What brand of boiler?

AdmiralYoda · December 12

I can tell you that the first year of using 8-way on my then-35 year old boiler I got some surging about two months after adding it. I flushed the boiler and LWCO out and gave it a good cleaning. Added enough 8-way to get the ph to 10 or so.

No problems at all but I noticed after a few months the water in the site glass got a little cloudy, not rust but kind of hazy. Then one night I heard some banging as water got shot up the main. First time that ever happened with my system.

My guess is that the 8-way cleaned off a bunch of scale and who knows what else and it made the boiler surge. I drained everything out, added fresh water and 8-way and ran it hard to drive off any oxygen.

Been running fine since.

ethicalpaul · December 12

yeah it’s definitely not a one-and-done process to get things into a steady clean state but don’t give up.

I’m getting a friend’s old Utica there, it takes time

TKPK · 12:05AM

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1826487#Comment_1826487

yeah, that’s what kind of happened. I was diluting and the pH was going up. Kind of drastically.

The test strips are not super easy to read/interpret but I was seeing 12-14 at some point. I did not expect pH to go up by adding distilled water.

If I cannot feel that it is stabilized I will start over with more distilled water.

TKPK · 12:12AM

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1826492#Comment_1826492

WM EG-65. 34 years old. That is a fresh pull after a burn so it is well mixed and concentrated (condensate not recovered yet). When it settles it looks much more clear.

I was trying to keep it pH 9-10 which is a little higher than WM suggests.

TKPK · 12:19AM

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1826493#Comment_1826493

I tend to agree. My boiler is ~ same age and I have made a lot of careful changes and until this everything has behave exactly like I thought it would.

This is the first “setback” and I think it is already recovered.

I have it logging temps from key points and I can easily follow burn time, cycle time, main fill time, and boiler, equalizer and main temps. Since I don’t have Paul’s setup, this is the next best thing IMO

ethicalpaul · 1:34AM

I would be really surprised if adding water caused the pH to increase dramatically (or at all). Perhaps the sample water is stratified, like for example, return water coming back is distilled pH 7 and if your sample has more of that, it can be too low, then a later sample might be mixed differently and show higher. Anyway I think you'll get to a good spot.

8 way foam

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