The 2am boiler pop that taught me about cold water feed lines

Up in Gary, Indiana last week, a 40-year-old unit let out a bang that shook the whole plant, turned out the feed line had a slow leak and the drum got starved. I shut it down, found a cracked check valve, and swapped it with a spare we had on the truck, but has anyone else dealt with a similar surge when the water level drops too fast?

2 comments

2 Comments

tessa_hill861d ago

Did you check if the boiler was trying to start a band with that bang? Because mine did the same thing last year, sounded like a bass drum and a cymbal crash in one go. Yeah, I had a drum starvation surge once on an old Cleaver-Brooks, water level dropped three inches in about ten seconds. That check valve crack is a classic, but the real fun starts when you find out the low water cutoff was wired backwards from the last guy's "fix". I ended up replacing the sight glass too since the old one was so stained I couldn't even tell where the real level was until it was too late. That 2am pop is just the boiler's way of saying it's done with your shift.

brooke_walker5h ago

You wired that low water cutoff backwards and it still ran until it popped? Man, that's the kind of thing that keeps me up at night. I've seen boilers do some wild stuff but that's a whole other level of scary. Did you catch it before anyone got hurt, or was it just pure luck? That stained sight glass thing gets me too, you think you're looking at the real level but you're just guessing. I'd have been tearing that panel off right then and there, not waiting for a 2am boom. Good on you for getting it sorted, but I'd have lost my mind over that wiring mess.