Burnham IN 8 shutting down

I have a 10 year old Burnham Independence 8 gas fired steam boiler installed in a single pipe system.

After many years of comfort, but really high winter gas bills (recently as high as $1200/mo), I decided to install a setback thermostat.

Then my problems began. The first thing I noticed was that as the weather turned colder, it would take forever to get steam into all the radiators. The first cold snap New Year’s eve, the system stopped making heat at 60 degrees even though the thermostat was set for 68.

Fearing that the LWC was clogged, I drained it until the water ran clear, but still, the boiler would not fire. I tapped around the LWC with a wrench and it came to life. It ran for about an hour and it cut off at 64 degrees, once again before the thermostat demand was met.

I wasn’t even thinking it was a high pressure situation, not knowing much about these things. (I’ve since learned a lot)

Apparently, my tapping around caused the pressuretrol (which is installed on a pigtail on the LWC) to trip on the cut-in limit, allowing the boiler to fire. It was set to 2 psi, with a 1 psi differential, the factory settings. Setting the pressuretrol to 3 psi with a 4 psi high limit has temporarily alleviated the problem of not getting any heat, but I still have some issues.

When the boiler runs, it can run for over an hour before all the radiators have heat. There is one line going to the second floor where you can hear the pipes gurgling, as if they had water in them. There is water leaking out of the top of the sight glass. While there is the appearance of some wet steam, the condition is not severe. I do not have hammers or noisy plumbing, other than the gurgling and the occasional short shot of steam coming out of some of the vents on the radiators. The water level in the sight glass oscillates about a half an inch when the boiler runs, and the pressure indicated on the Internal Syphon gauge can go as high as 10 psi, but it always returns to zero before the boiler recycles.

In the past 4 weeks I have learned from a variety of sources, including here on this forum, the following:

Boiler piping was installed incorrectly – instead of the two risers coming out of the top of the boiler I have one. It is copper, which is not recommended, and it does not have an equalizing line to the condensate return.

The boiler had been under-maintained, which was entirely my fault, which might have led to a clogged pigtail on the pressuretrol. I have put it a tube of “Scout” water treatment to condition the water in hopes that this will help a bit.

I may have a “slightly” oversized boiler – the IN 8 is rated at 240,000 btu, but according to a survey I did, I may only have an EDR of 650, indicating that my boiler should be around 160,000 btu.

My questions are the following. Is there anything to be gained by re-piping the boiler to meet factory spec? Is there a downside, ie., cracking the boiler housing, not being able to remove the plug in the second opening, etc? Is the boiler so badly oversized that it is contributing to such a high rate of fuel consumption? Is there anything I can/should do at this point to improve my situation. I have gotten mixed responses on this ranging from “I wouldn’t sleep in a house where the plumbing between the boiler and the steam lines was done in copper!” to “do you really want to disturb that plumbing and open a pandora’s box?” HELP!!