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Posted by TimD on October 02, 2004 at 16:48:02:
In Reply to: no water treatment posted by kmodo on September 30, 2004 at 05:16:03:
: How long would you give a low pressure sectional weil mclain steam boiler to live under the following circumstances. No chemical treatment, no softening, cold city water going straight to the unit,high mineral city water,appears to never been blown down.
Kmodo, We usually would get 5-10 years on our Utica run on hard city water but with 100% condensate return. We recently learned we should only blow down once a month to avoid introducing oxygen into boiler water ( make up city water). We don't use boiler chemical on these 15hp boilers.
I recently installed a new softened water boiler feed system and an inexpensive batery powered feed water totalizer on as new 15hp utica sectional. Much to our surprise, the boiler would use less than 1 gallon of make up water per week if we didn't blowdown. Also, the boiler water ph is 9-10. The condensate return ph is slightly low at ph 7. this should be above 8.2 to prevent corrosion in steam and return pipes. I could add a condensate chemical , but will wait and see. We just read water meter daily and test boiler and condensate water conductivity and ph weekly to confirm boiler is operating correctly.
We also have 40hp weil mclain sectional, but do run a mild boiler chemical on this 2 year old boiler. We blow down 20 gallons weekly and need approx 200ml chemical a week to maintain boiler water ph, sulfite and condesate ph. This unit is feed soft water and has 100% condensate return. The stack temp is nearly the same as when new. We monitor water feed totalizer daily and boiler water ph & conductivity weekly.
Hope this helps.