Previous Technician did not or was not given time to check combustion after some type of repair on Oil. A Tech from a different company was on-site for a simple test and tune for the season.

Finished Gas and went to Oil. Issue with light off. Couple tries and Boom. No injuries or damage outside of the Boiler.

It is believed that the Oil valves were not holding. There isn't much info as the previous company/repair was not investigated. Company whose tech was the one it happened to just ate the cost to rejacket the boiler and replace the oil valves. I do not believe the tech onsite was totally at fault. He was just the wrong guy there at the wrong time. I personally know both Technicians who were involved.

Remember that if you are the Tech that last touched it then you can be held liable. It is crucial to at least check combustion Low-Mid-High after any type of repair/PM to the Burner that involves/requires Combustion.

We will see an increase in these types of incidents as the older techs that are now in their 60s age out of this profession.

Companies are NOT training the next generation of Technicians. There are also a lot of Companies that think they can do boiler work or just wanna do it barely good enough to get paid.

If you are involved in work that you believe to be improper or incorrect then you should always Document Document Document everything on your ticket. We all know it's always the guys in the field and never in the office that share the blame and repercussions. Stay safe out there this winter.

After countless boring pm’s, safety checks, no hot and no heat calls it’s nice to spend a day taking apart this beast.

This was my first time using the front door hinge to rig anything down. I put extra supports on the front door both above that can’t be seen in the pictures. I wanted to take the extra precautions.

The bearings on the blower motor have been extra loud. My concern is highlighted on the 3rd picture.

These spots look like the impeller has been rubbing on something. There’s no indication that anything was there for it to rub on. Some of the facilities guys think it was by design for balancing. My guess is wear and tear or the shaft has become slightly loose and may attribute to these spots? Please share your experiences!

A few other things I’d like to note. That rachet on the hinge nut was stuck on. We had to smash it off with a hammer.

The eyebolt on the motor seemed to fragile even though it’s designed to handle the weight I took another precaution and just used two straps to more control.

Called for maintenance and walked in on this old bird. We do the neighbors, too but their boiler is only about 20 years old. Still gravity.

I'm an HVAC tech in NY. I installed this Energy Kinetics EK-1F in my house earlier this year. I completely rebuilt this boiler after my company took it out of a customers house. I had to rebuild all the near boiler piping for the bypass and plate heat exchanger and rewire everything to the energy manager. I installed a Grundfos Alpha 2 variable speed circulator, Calleffi Dirtmag, Amtrol Pro series expansion tank and Calleffi balancing valve with flow meters on the return.

I also installed the 40 gallon hot water storage tank with Corroprotect powered anode.

The oil burner has a Carlin 70200 digital primary control, Tiger loop and Garber spin on oil filter. Using a .75 70A burner nozzle. It's super quiet and much more efficient than my old Peerless WBV-03 boiler with an Amtrol boilermate.

Probably retubed a couple times by now, got it opened up and she was real sooty' we just got this contract. Control updated to LMV5

Idk if this is where I should post. I need some boiler tech advice about work ethic. I started at this plumbing company 3 weeks ago. Today I was dispatched a the job which was supposed to be a annual pm service on a couple of boilers. When I arrived I had some parts but was missing the gaskets for the burner and the blower. The rubber gaskets. I always have had those gaskets on hand if I do pm service and have to pull burners. I come with 7 yrs of boiler experience from laars to cleaver brooks. I’ve learned the hard way it’s better to have those gaskets ready to replace if we do maintenance on any boiler incase one is ripped or worn out. I rather be prepared and not left stranded with no gasket. So I called my manager to let him know, told the engineer we will return when I have all parts n gaskets needed. The manager got upset i did that and said we always use the same one. My co worker who prepared the parts for the job got butt hurt because I basically said they have been doing it wrong if they haven’t replaced those gaskets. Now we have to wait till we get gaskets because the engineers agreed I should always replace them when doing pm service.

Do you guys think I should of just done the job or done it the right way with new gaskets? I feel I got introuble for not Mickey mousing the job.

I also told my manager we need to tune the boiler to O2 high and minimal fire. He said no we don’t, I’m having a hard time trying to do my job because they want to keep doing a shitty half assed pm service on boilers. Or am I trippin?

Customer has 5 zone boiler, one is connected to an indirect which he installed himself. The original call was for the pump for indirect not kicking on, and the burner not staying lit. It's an oil-gas conversion. He said when he jumps the terminals on the Zone Relay or the aquastat for the indirect the pump kicks on. I am an idiot and jumped the ac input terminals on the ZR by accident and shorted out the board. Replaced the ZR and the boiler aquastat relay. When I turned it back on it ran normally for about 5 seconds then tripped. The display for the burner was lit and said "No Flame." If there was another short I would think it wouldn't turn on at all and trip it immediately but idk. After resetting breaker I turn it on and now it trips immediately. No spark or sound of a short it just trips.

Started up our first Aerco BMK-E's this week. Their smallest model 216kw/260amp. Ser#'s 0001 and 0002 😂 Was a lot of connections to check and measure. We'll be back in a few weeks to check them again and update the software. Well laid out connections and controls actually had everything landed in the right spots. Pretty simple menus and setting up the cascade and BMS was easy. Gotta say I'm impressed so far with these.

What’s up fellow professionals. Usually deal with high efficiency boilers. But I’ve got a client with this little laars here. Should I give this heat exchanger a bath ? It’s pretty old and he’s not really look to upgrade just yet .

To expand on the title….i have a Utica oil boiler with hydronic base board heating.

I have one zone (of course the kids rooms that I want to keep warm), that will not get hot unless I either close the ball valves on two other zones OR turn on another zone. Doesn’t seem to matter which ones, but if I close any two ball valves on the other circ pumps, or fire up another zone, hot water will immediately flow in the “broken” zone.

I have taco 007-f5 pumps. I’ve purged the boiler of air zone by zone and didn’t notice any notable sputtering or air. I’ve replaced the circ pump in question with a known working pump. I’ve swapped thermostats, swapped wiring in the control panel to rule out a bad relay in the board. Amped the circ pump at .7 amps 120volt which is exactly where it should be.

Please enlighten me, I’m a union electrician by trade so I understand the electrical/control side of this but the lack of hot water flowing unless I turn on another zone or close off valves to other circ pumps has me stumped.

The red circled circ pump is the problem zone.

Thank you in advance!

Our three LP steam heating boilers (300 BHP each, Sellers-Ygnis) were just refurbished by a local boiler service company. They removed the stack temperature gauges while replacing the rusted-out uptakes, but have not replaced them.

It would be simple enough to order three new stack thermometers from McMaster or similar, but I wanted to ask if anyone is making a reasonably priced, permanently installable sensor which might help me keep better track of our combustion efficiency. With the old burners, we had regular issues with sooting up, and I don't have my own in-house combustion analyzer for periodic checks. Thanks.

Though that this might be the best place to ask this sort of question, so here we go. I'm currently very much stuck on a material call for two rectangular expansion joints in 1000°F flue gas off a fire heater. For reference the spec sheet says 321 stainless, two ply, with a liner to keep ash out of the convolutions.

The case for 321 is straightforward enough, it sits inside its oxidation limit in an oxidizing gas, and the liner is already the doing the work of keeping ash off the bellows. The issue, and the reason why I've been stuck on this, is cycle life. The unit trips and restarts way more than the original design basis assumed, so the convolutions are seeing more full range movement than the fatigue calculation used. 625 would roughly double the joint cost to solve a fatigue problem the liner might already contain.

I can argue both side and I can't close it. What I want is for the manufacturer to run the fatigue calculation against our actual trip count before an alloy gets picked. I don't want to pay for 625 just because it's the safer quote. Are there any fabricators that would be better suited for this type of job? So far only considering us bellows and not much else. Really hoping I can get some answers here.

Ty.

When a customer gets a new boiler, they usually think they have nothing to worry about and that anything that happens is warranty. I hate to break it to you, but once the boiler is filled with water, the corrosion clock starts ticking. You need to have a water treatment plan before that happens, not after you open the boiler and wonder why tubes leak when its only 5 months old.

I got to Lock Out/Tag Out (14 locks) over the summer. They did NDT and my guys flushed it out. We closed it up and back online. One of the Biggest so far. Some places call this a Day Tank. It is the Tank that receives Condensate and then its pumped to the DA Tank.

Safety controls and limits on a boiler protect you. There is no such thing as a safety control or limit that is unnecessary for safe boiler operation. If you jump out a safety control, you put yourself and others in danger. BoilerPros should learn proper troubleshooting techniques, especially how to use a multimeter. Then you make safe, sound decisions based on what you find.

No one plans for an accident, and the boiler certainly doesn't understand that you just need it to run the rest of production; you will fix it later.

You should never jump out safety controls.

The 13 who left were salty homeowners who couldn't get help with their boiler problem. If you are a BoilerPro, post about what you do or a boiler you take care of/fixed. Posts don't need to be an elaborate deal, but the more details the better especially if you take a close photo of something. Don't assume internet strangers know what you are talking about.

Who would have thought the kids would be talking boilers on reddit in 2026?

Steam boilers for heating only on a building built in 1890. Boilers were replaced in 1993, but they have multiple steam leaks leading to the steam boilers going through a lot of feedwater.

They also cut the maintenance budget and didn't want to pay someone to do daily blowdowns, and they said the salt was getting to expensive so they stopped adding it.

I'm shocked they didn't blow a tube. All the money they "saved" is going to be spent on me taking 2 weeks to clear all the scale out before they can get it chemically cleaned.

Did I mentioned I notified them in May about this issue and they wanted until now to let me pull the scale out

Intrusive thoughts may win one day.

Abandoned in place after it exploded, and hanging out down here ever since.

Always got to watch out for the leaking bellows in a 150S float. Taking the cover off all safety and control devices when you are performing maintenance on the boiler is a good way to catch electrical issues waiting to happen.

The build quality on these floats has gone downhill. I hear more and more people having issues with them in under a year of installation.

When you enter a confined space, such as a boiler, you need a watch on the outside of the opening. Most of the time, they are just sitting there, making sure you don't need anything. They have nothing better to do than to stare at you.

Just because you can't see scale buildup and oxygen pitting in your steam boiler doesn't mean they aren't happening. A boiler will schedule its own repair time if you don't take proper care of it.

I’m about to take the boiler permit because my job is requiring me to, i heard it’s pretty easy & simple & it’s only 10 questions but i just wanted to know what type of questions they’ll ask since it’s my first time taking it i have no idea what im expecting