Commercial Steam Boiler Repair Recommendation
We have a commercial steam boiler that has too much water. We changed the lower water cut off, MM water feeder, but the water is still too high. When the water is too high (the glass tube shows 80%), the button on the pressure box goes off and the boiler stops working. Any idea what cause the boiler to have so much water? Also, please recommend a few good plumbers that specialize in commercial steam boiler repair. Thanks.
Guest User | 5 years and 11 months ago
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ellenlourie | 5 years and 10 months ago
Boiler water level and excessive steam pressure are not related. Your manual reset high pressure control probably trips because it is set too close to high limit pressure control, or high limit pressure control defective or its piping is clogged. Get qualified boiler repair professional involved.
stevecym | 5 years and 10 months ago
MP: i can’t argue with that. my solution was ONE solution out of many possibilities and it was the ONE i was taught by a paid and licensed expert and the ONLY one that i would have ventured forth with as anything beyond that required training and messing with the interlocks and controls/adjustments and would have endangered people. i worked in that place for three years and aside from adjusting the heat timer for optimum heat, never moved a setting on the boiler.
if you had said this first, possibly acknowledging what i was saying as plausible, i would have gone away.
Master Plvmber | 5 years and 10 months ago
> @Steam Boiler
> We have a commercial steam boiler that has too much water. We changed the lower water cut off, MM water feeder, but the water is still too high. When the water is too high (the glass tube shows 80%), the button on the pressure box goes off and the boiler stops working. Any idea what cause the boiler to have so much water? Also, please recommend a few good plumbers that specialize in commercial steam boiler repair.
OP: The glass tube showing 80% isn’t enough to activate the lockout function on the pressure limit device. Your system probably operates at around 1-2 PSI and the manual reset pressuretrol is commonly set at around 5x the operating pressure. As far as your boiler flooding, the high pressure condition needs to be resolved first. What is likely happening is the failure of the pressure device(s) is pushing the water level down and out of the boiler, into the return piping, and activating the automatic water feeder which in those moments is reacting as if the system has steamed out.
A service provider needs to clear the length of the piping/pig tail connections to the pressure regulating devices then run a test. If that all checks out and the problem persists, then your boiler is likely “surging” which is generally related to water quality, but again, pushes water out of the boiler and activates the water feeder.
The bottom line is you need a qualified service provider to troubleshoot your issue and bring it to resolution before you start pushing water out of air vents and causing damage.
This is me but I’m swamped through the weekend: www.72fMechanical.com
stevecym | 5 years and 10 months ago
and about the sarco traps. let’s keep in mind that there are different applications for these devices and i am not a plumber or designer. you asked me about them and why i should know that something is not a closed loop and i think i thought of an application where it would not be: i once work in a building with purchase steam from con-ed and at the end of the run, just after the last radiator, there was a sarco trap. when that trap opened, i believe it dumped the condensate into the sewer line. so that was not a closed system. i admit i am only guessing.
sorry to the OP for taking this over, i did not mean to.
stevecym | 5 years and 10 months ago
mp: you had the opportunity let me think that i had misspoke when i referred to that system as closed. i even went to bed last night wondering if that kind of system is not only something not in use anymore or if it is in use, is it so when buildings lie out flat, as a low rise, as opposed to being stacked in such a way that the steam condensate flows back to the bottom on its own and does not need what I seem to recall was called a “vacuum pump” (i may be wrong there). and i was telling myself that perhaps the system i was talking is not used in Brooklyn and Manhattan where you work (mine was in the Bronx and the building was spread out). i would have been polite and let you take this conversation over but you kept poking holes in what i was saying instead of turning to something productive. and now you end it with “wow” because you realize that i will pull the link to a “closed loop steam system” and post it here after you said there is no such thing and perhaps that is what the OP has and perhaps the problem i was faced with 21 years ago is what they are fa cing now.
you are supposed to know more than me. there is a way to take this over without putting people down and convey your point so we all learn. if you had tried that, i would have stopped typing and read what you wrote.
Master Plvmber | 5 years and 10 months ago
Wow.
stevecym | 5 years and 10 months ago
instead of focusing on something that i am saying that might be wrong or with equal chance might be correct, why not offer the op some alternative solutions? what i spoke was what we had to do to deal with a popped pressure switch on a “closed loop steam system”. i know, the OP may not have that system or may not have a heat timer valve to close it off or something else that i do not know or understand. but no doubt you know more than me, so offer it.
stevecym | 5 years and 10 months ago
MP, i am only guessing the system i am describing predates you. it was old.
stevecym | 5 years and 10 months ago
i googled it, its closed. the sarco trap holds back the steam until the heat is used up and it turns to condensate and as the condensate fills the trap, opens and allows such condensate to flow back to the injector pump which puts it into the boiler whence it came. look, i know you know what you are talking about, so what gives?
anyway, neither one of us is helping the OP. i guess we should all be happy that we have lived so old that this is what we do on Friday night.
Master Plvmber | 5 years and 10 months ago
If you understood what a trap does, be it the Sarco brand or any other, you wouldn’t have described the system as being a “closed loop”. How much longer do you want to do this?
stevecym | 5 years and 10 months ago
I described every component of that system from memory. do you want me to explain how it works so you can correct me on some minor calculation or tell me i don’t understand what a Sarco trap does? or do you want to tell me it is or is not a “closed loop system”. i have my answer. i googled it AFTER writing what i last did but was giving you the courtesy of the reply since you should know the answer.
Master Plvmber | 5 years and 10 months ago
You use a lot of words to say nothing at all.
stevecym | 5 years and 10 months ago
now your making conversation. to me it was a closed loop. maybe it looks that way. my point was, this would not happen or could not happen in my single pipe system in my house as the pressure would just go out through the vents in the radiators.
now you can enlighten me: the system we had was a giant HB Smith boiler (measured in HP, not btu’s) with a steam line out the top, and heat timer valve, radiators with an inlet and outlet, sarco traps on the radiators and between floors, and a condensate return line with a return pump that forced the warm condensate back into the boiler under pressure. to me it looked like a closed loop (something that can be pressurized and trip a safety; i do believe the saftey only tripped as the ht valve was closed; that happen 21 years ago to be exact). I welcome a correction here.
that entire system was massive and interesting and old.
when I read things with lay people, i sometimes find it helps to try to underst and what they are saying as opposed to nail them on their incorrect use of term. and if they do use a term incorrectly and i want to be generous, i explain it.
Master Plvmber | 5 years and 11 months ago
There is no such thing a closed loop steam heating system.
stevecym | 5 years and 11 months ago
and review what the op says, “the button on the pressure box goes off”. sorry, sounds exactly like what i experienced.
stevecym | 5 years and 11 months ago
@master plumber: i am not sure i know nothing about it. i am telling someone what I went through with a very large commercial boiler that we had filled and would not start. it was a closed system with traps and a return pump. and we had to bring a mechanic and he had me release pressure from it and it started.
(you know what, now that i think of it, we had a heat timer valve in there just above the boiler and maybe it was closed and that was the reason the water pressure built up so much that it tripped the interlock; its been nearly 20 years, sorry, my age must be getting to me; perhaps my omitting this part makes this sound unrealistic).
i read things all day long on here from people who know some things and know them like we were taught them in shop class or someplace but do not know them to the extant that i may know them from doing the work. i read them and i understand what they are saying but unless something is wrong, i do not challenge them. instead, i take the high road and speak to what i might know a little more. perhaps you can say somethin g to the effect of “steve, that might be what happen there but more likely this is the situation here because…..” and enlighten all of us.
what i experienced did happen and it took a boiler mechanic to sort it out with me and teach me to deal with it; we paid the person. i spoke from experience.
Master Plvmber | 5 years and 11 months ago
Stevecym, why do you insist on posting so frequently about topics you know next to nothing about? It’s the opposite of helpful.
stevecym | 5 years and 11 months ago
hey, i once ran a steam boiler that was a sealed system with a condensate return. when we filled the boiler, the pressure from the city water main was enough to pressurize the system and pop the safety interlock and we could not start it. is your system something like this? closed loop (two pipe; one into the radiator and one out?). maybe it is not the amount of water, but the pressure from the city main that is the problem. keep in mind that these boilers only operate at a couple of pounds, yet the pressure in the city water main is like 60# and can pressurize a small closed system.
when we had this problem we had to release some of the pressure by opening a safety.
this is only a guess and before taking what i am saying, do a little more research; when i had this issue, it took a boiler mechanic to come and explain all the nuances of the system to me.