My janky, DIY hot water loops on my steam boiler

no, just some things

Thanks Bob. What part could get ugly, like the mixing with the throttle valves? This is what Dan suggests to do, I'm not sure how to avoid it.

If you're saying no one should install such a system without a heat exchanger, I can understand that—just wondering which ugly part you are thinking of.

Thanks Ed. I do "set it and forget it" and it always seems to be around 120F into the loop which works well for my needs. It would definitely be a different story I'm sure if I was actually heating a whole room with it, especially in the seasons where the boiler might not fire for a day or two.

Am I recording on the wrong orientation, or are you viewing on the extreme minority device? 😅

According to recent data, the majority of YouTube viewers access the platform on their phones, with around 63% of YouTube video views coming from mobile devices compared to only 12% from desktop computers; meaning a significantly higher proportion of viewers watch on their phone than on desktop.

Thanks! Agree completely! And if someone messes with the valves it’s trouble

I should take this moment to say that I'm aware that the entire commercial steam industry and a few vigilant homeowners like @ChrisJ and @KC_Jones and apparently a very few residential steam contractors are willing to do anything about residential water chemistry. I'm by no means discovering anything new here, but the fact that I see almost no awareness of it in on youtube and in the homeowners who I have visited makes me want to keep yelling about it.

One of the most respected and prolific youtubers who works with steam, mikeypipes, for example, seems completely ignorant of the topic and seems to think that flushing and refilling is the key to boiler health and happiness.

I'm still looking forward to a video with @Gordo showing a homeowner how to manage their pH level!! Since he puts unions on his PRVs now, that's a good place to add stuff!

Maybe the quality of water from the supplier might matter regarding some stuff, but all water has oxygen in it. Can you speak to the quality issues that might affect this? I could see salt content being a big one.

I would remove 100 year old boilers from the discussion as irrelevant. I think it's known that castings were crazy thick then and possibly made with different formulations. They don't make them like that anymore so there's no way that a new boiler homeowner can just ignore the topic and have everything be OK for 100 years IMO.

I've heard this term before, but can you tell me what "work harder" means in terms of an iron container of water with fire in/under it? 🙂

About how long to these Miuras last with good water quality? And what quality are they affected by? Like TDS or ?

Thanks. And scale forms as dissolved solids precipitate out of the water and form on the cast iron surfaces? Is that how that works?

Would that affect thinner castings more than thicker castings?

It sure does, and we know some people are using it because there are just so many products out there being produced. I'm sure it's partially an issue of we only see the worst maintained systems on this forum usually.

And it's interesting, I think the thing I hear the most, which is definitely false is that "too much pH will make your boiler surge". I think what happens is the anti-scale properties of most treatments break up and put back into solution a LOT of scale and sediment all at once which may cause surging until it's been all freed up and flushed out. But then people erroneously think it's the pH that causes the surging.