October 31, 2011

A couple of weeks ago, I did my annual pre-heating season ritual of flushing my 42 year-old Weil-McLain steam boiler in preparation for the ceremonial relighting of the pilot light. I learned later from a plumber that you shouldn’t flush a cold boiler because the fresh incoming water will leave chemical deposits. It was academic in this case however because the boiler drained dry. WTF? The low water cutoff (LWCO)/autofeed should have replenished the boiler with fresh water. It didn’t. Granted, the LWCO looks like some sort of World War 2-era device and it had never been serviced since I […]