Almost There

Well, I've figured out everything that's wrong with our boiler. As I showed in my last post I changed the pressure relief valve, which sealed my system. That allowed me to further diagnosis what the problem was. After I turned on the boiler the tank started to heat up just as it's suppose to, so I knew the burner and tank were all doing their jobs. It took about 10 minutes for the temperature in the tank to reach a toasty 190 degrees. I thought everything was running smooth, and mostly it was. I went upstairs to check the radiators and found that they were still cold; this was pretty understandable though since it takes a while for all the water in the system to heat up. I decided to bleed the radiators upstairs to make sure they weren't filled with air, blocking the hot water from getting upstairs.

Sure enough, probably because of the work I was doing downstairs, the radiators were pretty full of air. I went back downstairs to check how the boiler was doing. Everything was stable, temperature at about 190, pressure at about 14 lbs. One thing I noticed though was that the pipes about 8 feet away from the boiler were still very cold. This had me somewhat concerned because I already had concerns that the circulation pump was broken. Sure enough, it didn't take long for the boiler to start to overheat. At about 200 degrees the new relief valve I just put in started to open up and drip out. Then at about 205 it started to gush hot steaming water until I turned the boiler off.

This told me two things. First, my aquastat is shot. The aquastat is the little dial that sets the temperature on your hot water heater, or in this case my boiler. If it was doing it's job, it would have shut off the burner on my boiler when it started to get too hot, say about 190 degrees. However, mine just kept on firing up the burners, heating up the water more and more until the relief valve had to open up to keep the water from getting too hot and ruining the boiler.

Second, and most importantly, the reason the water in the tank kept getting hotter and hotter is because the pump was, sadly, broken. This was preventing the hot water in the tank from getting pumped out into my pipes, which ultimately heat my house.

So I decided to turn to my good friend Internet for help. I googled the part number I found stamped on the side of the aquastat, and to my surprise one entry came up on Google. That was for a auction out of Rhode Island that was selling a new, out of the box aquastat that I needed. One that hasn’t been made in years. Apparently the guy is a gas technician who just has a bunch of old parts lying around. I grabbed that right away and turned my sights on the pump.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find any type of part number on the pump, let alone a manufacturer. The only thing I could think of doing is posting a picture on the heating forum I had joined to see if one of their pros could identify it. Sure enough one of them came back and informed me that I have a B & G 100 series pump. They’re easy to find, too. A quick search on Google and I found that I could get the motor and the bearing assembly for about $240.00.

Not too bad, but I was a little weary of spending that much money without getting a professional to look at the system and see if that was really what was wrong. So Monday morning I called Tessendorf Mechanical and asked them to take a look at the boiler. The service tech came out early Monday and called me after looking at the system. He agreed that the pump was bad, and gave me a price of $400 dollars to change it. The price included all of the parts and 2 hours labor. I asked him if I could save myself some money if I drained the system myself and removed the old pump.

The deal we came up with is that I would leave him a check in the morning for the 400 dollars. Then, depending on how long it actually took his guy to replace the pump, he would send me a credit check. I accepted the offer in good faith and set out tonite to make the service techs job as easy as possible.

First I isolated the boiler by shutting off all of the valves I could find leading up to the tank. There were some pipes that didn’t have shut off valves, so I knew I would have to drain them as well. After I drained the expansion tank I hooked up a hose on the boiler drain and tried to open it up. Unfortunately, the drain hadn’t been opened since Jimmy Carter was President, and it was stuck. I pulled out a pipe wrench and tried to turn the dial with that. It worked, but the dial just spun and no water came out. The drain was busted.

Our busted boiler drain valve. Doesn’t anything work on this boiler?!?!

This was terribly disappointing because not only because I couldn’t drain the system, but now I needed to replace the drain. And since the guy was coming tomorrow morning and needed the system drained to do his job, I would have to pay him to do both! Frantically, Crystal and I jumped in the car looking for a Home Depot or Lowes that was open past 9pm. Thankfully we found a Lowes in Algonquin that was still open. I picked up a 1” ball valve and headed back.

I took off the old valve and water started gushing out. As quickly as possible, I tried to put the new valve on so I would have control of the water flow. But, the valve didn’t fit. They were both 1”, but apparently they didn’t use the same threads in 1975 when my boiler was built. So we had to quickly come up with a new plan. I decided to just run the shop-vac hose right under the open drain and suck all the water right into the shop-vac. This worked quite well and we were able to drain the system with a pretty minimal mess of water on the floor.

Then I turned my sights on the pump:

This is the old pump still in place.

The first step was to disconnect to wring that powered the pump.

A couple of screws and a couple of wire nuts and the power is off.

Next were the four bolts that held the motor to the return pipe.

Other than a reaching around some tight corners, these bolts came off with ease.

And with that the motor was free.

This is the source of all my problems. It’s a heavy guy, too.

The last step was to support the pipe that was now hanging with the motor removed. I cut a 2x4 to the length I needed and propped it between the pipes to support the upper one.

A completed removal ready for the professional to come in and do his job quickly.

Given how easy it was to remove the motor, I almost wish I had done the installation myself. But, the fact is that I miss my family and I wouldn’t be able to get a motor until Friday at the earliest and Tessondorf will be able to install his in morning.

Total cost up till now: $11
New aquastat (yet to be installed but not necessary to get heat: $18
New pump, installed: $400 (minus credit for the time I saved)

By Tuesday nite, I should have heat.

And a family again.