My name is Ray Wohlfarth and I love boilers. These videos talk about experiences I have seen in boiler rooms and hope they help you. We will cover steam boilers as well as hydronic systems. My monthly blog is on BrewingwithSteam.com and it talks about low pressure steam systems for breweries and distilleries.
In the future, I will be inviting other techs to share their experiences inside a boiler room. I have written 11 books on boilers. They are available on Amazon. A new case will be uploaded each week on Friday mornings. If you have suggestions or your own weird service call, let me know. My email is Ray@fireiceheat.com
All excellent points. Vaporstats offer better low pressure steam control. I also think any boiler over 500,000 BTU input benefits with a minimum of a Low-High-Low firing burner. This not only saves fuel, but reduces surging in a system with less than stellar cleanliness.
It might only be a mystery to me but I would love to see your thought process for designing a heating system for a given building. Say I'm building or renovating a house and replacing the HVAC.. how would you approach it? What considerations would you take into account?
It depends on the budget as always. I typically try using the existing distributions system like ducts or pipes. If I were building new, I would have hot water radiant heat in the floors and would probably use ductless mini splits for the ac but it would allow backup as they would be heat pumps. We did have one large home where we removed the radiators and did radiant staple up heat for the first floor. The customer loved it
The algorithm brought me here. Not a boiler guy. As an embedded controls guy, I appreciate hearing about stupid failure modes like oxygen depletion from boilers. Yikes!
Yup. Typical Smith section. Change some every year it seems like. My theory is no swing joints on the riser piping leaving the sections. I think it stresses the metal too much on cold start up.
Ray. Great Traing! As pointed out in your discussion with a Line Voltage Disconnect, what are your thoughts on Control Relays that fail (failed via shorted coils and "stuck" in operation modes) and the breaking of Controls only vs. Line Voltage? Killing the transformer for the controls may not allow the relays or solid state/electronic controls may not stop a run away? Whike I agree whole heartedly with the Safety of these (mostly frankly non-existent) Shut Offs, in the Refrigeration Trades with the advent of new Safety Protocols the Shut Offs kill everything and activate ventilation for noxious or O2 depleting levels of refrigerants. The problem I have with these Safeties is that if there were a Fire the ventilation aspect could feed the blaze.
Thanks for the comment. On commercial projects, the burner manufacturer tells you where they want the emergency stop switch. if not, I suggest a normally open contact with the child wired in series with the operating and safety controls
Yikes. In my not so humble opinion, though, Ray, it should be ANY electrical component which has been soaked should not be used -- except for the rare widget which is intended to be soaked.
God sent you there to save lives that day. These maintenance people out there have got to wake up. Went to a new contract customer not to long ago and they jumped out terminals 5 and 6 on M&M 150 head causing continuous burner operation during a low water condition. The excuse they gave me was the new micro switches on the newer 150s don’t hold up like the mercury ones. 😂 Luckily they keep the column clean. Great work Ray.
Great explanation on why steam pressure/temp is so critical in different applications. Hanes requires approximately 50psi/approx. 300 degrees for their sock making process.
Fantastic explanation of how the weight of water works against pressure and the other way around. Our tech advisor has classes about the physics of this process religiously and some people just can’t grasp the concept .43 exerting 1psi rule. This factor is also key when troubleshooting pressure related issues in a hydronic system in tall buildings hence the reason for the HW boilers installed near the top floor. Great video Ray.
Perfect example of why companies go so far to cover their ass. Chuck in a truck side work guys need to literally drive their own vehicles and wear their own work clothes. I’ve seen this happen several times. Unit breaks, they call the company they remember whether they were there or not.
Excellent video, hugely informative. Two questions, why the use of two check valves, in case one fails I would think? Also, if the boilers goes into vacuum, there isn't really anything to be done, as it will flood, or can a vacuum breaker be put on the boiler?
@@boilerroomdetective it does not. The little bit of condensate in the brass trap keeps the swing check pushed closed when under pressure. I’ve used Hoffman #26s in the past and they usually bite the dust after a few years especially in an application that has an automated steam valve on steam supply causing the boiler to go into vacuum frequently.
Just a comment, only from my experience of course, since building operators or owners started getting rid of vacuum pumps the amount of condensate tanks has increased. I think a lot of it was guess which left cool water in the pipes and the dreaded steam hammer when they mix. I think that the vacuum pump systems were better because it required you to check the actual piping and be honest! Good video. Thank you
As a young pipefitter, I had the pleasure of working with an old Master Fitter who excelled at replacing the Push Nipples between sectional boilers. Building the boiler back up and carefully tuning the connecting rods so as to allow for expansion was his specialty. And while it was labor intensive, and rarely done today, it was the way things were done back then. A quick little side story with the same Master. We enter a basement to work on an H.B. Smith boiler and as this cellar had no suitable drain we had to drain the boiler into a pail and carry the pail up and out the bulkhead to dump outside. My mentor looked at this boiler and told me to take the first 17 pails outside and then he would take the next 17. I never even considered that he knew exactly how much water this boiler would hold, and sure enough, the 17th pail only filled about half-way. And he was ready to begin working on the return piping.
As a young 19 year old I worked with my Dad, he was a plumber and his friend is a boiler guy and oil burner tech. Well, his friend needed someone to help him on a job and he asked my dad if he could borrow me for the day to help him on a job and of course he obliged. On this job was exactly the same, we put the boiler sections together in the basement and then piped and wired everything etc. Back in those days the boilers didn't come as packaged boilers, we had to put the whole thing together. Well, I liked doing the boiler / oil / gas burner work much more and my dads friend a few days later wanted to borrow me again and he did and I was eager to go on another boiler job. This happened half a dozen times or so and I told my dad that I was going to go work for his friend. My dad had no problem with it because he had my brother working for him too. I ended up working for his friend for the next 15 years or so and got my masters license. Now it's all package boilers unless it's commercial jobs and we did plenty of schools and churches etc over the years back then.
