Posted by lmccoy on February 03, 2000 at 09:11:41:
In Reply to: Re: low water cutoff posted by Tony Conner on February 01, 2000 at 19:47:25:
: : I recently had a low water cutoff with feeder installed. It was suppose to make it so I did'nt have to worry about the water level in my steam boiler as much. Here is the problem! When boiler is not firing the water level in the sight tube is at 1/2 mark. When the boiler fires the water level goes down enough to cause the feeder to kick in and add water. When the steam goes out and then comes back as water it then floods my boiler. I have to drain about 2 buckets of water every 3 days in order to keep the boiler from flooding. Was the low water cut-off/feeder installed correctly or is it something else that is causing this. Thanks in advance for the help! JT
: Could be as simple as having the boiler operating at too high a pressure. Set it for 2 PSIG, max. The condensate has to stack up 28" in the return piping to overcome each pound of pressure in the boiler. If the boiler is running at, say, 5 PSIG, you'd have to have condenate backed-up 140" before it could even start to get back into the boiler. When the boiler cycles off, the pressure falls, and all that condensate drains back. In the meantime, the feeder has sensed low water in the boiler, and added some. Now there's too much. Could also be old return lines that are mostly clogged, not letting the condensate get back quickly enough. Whatever the problem is, find it and fix it. All that fresh water is full of dissolved oxygen that will eat your boiler.