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Plugging up a boiler leak question....
QUESTION:Two years ago, we bought our new home in northern NJ ... one unit in a
5-unit condo with shared heating, that had a 15-20 year old
Weil-McLain MGB6 boiler. This is a low pressure, 850K BTU (input)
gas-fed steam boiler that I thought worked quite well, until a few
nights ago.
Anyways, it apparently had a small leak in the steam side, well
above the water line (just below where the overflow valve would
let water out). The autofiller broke, and caused the system
to overfill, dousing the ignition, damaging it beyond repair.
The cost of the ignition repair was substantial: $1,800. To prevent
this from happening again, we switched to filling the system by
hand.
My question is: Can this leak be repaired? It's not in the
guts of the boiler, where it's out of reach. In fact, I can
see where the leak is when the water trickles (which shouldn't
happen now since we make sure not to overfill).
I heard of the following repair suggestions:
1. Welding, but it seems impractical since the leak is in-between
boiler sections, and the clearance between the [rusting] peices
is at most 1 inch.
2. Oatmeal. This sounds crazy, but I've heard it from so many
people, that it's beginning to sound that it may work. Some
suggested that because it's too high up in the very top part
of a section that we risk clogging other parts of the boiler.
3. Plugging up the hole(s) using some high-temp epoxy. I got this
suggestion from only one person, who himself has never done the
repair procedure. But, what the heck? I might as well ask about
this also.
I'm looking to repair, at least to get us through the winter. All the
heating people that came in were basically interested only in selling
a new boiler, and all the bids were in the stratosphere. I thought
that if we made it to warmer weather, we'd have more realistic cost
estimates. Does anyone have any suggestions? Are there any
boiler leak repair kits out there? I hope that there is, because
I don't know how we're going to get a new boiler installed in
short order. Now I just heard that it'll be snowing hard tonight.
ANSWER: A proper trained welder? I didn't know they welded cast iron sections. You
replace them don't you?
While your pinning the oatmeal fix at the shop.
My uncle who would be 100, if still alive, ask me what I used to temporarily
stopped leaks. I told him "Boiler Seal" and he nodded.
He told me he used horse , and made sure it was fed oats. Of course I
thought it funny, and asked him how much pressure did the steam boiler operate
at. He said 140 lbs, and sometimes more if the fireman wasn't careful.
He told me they would two scoops of horse in, and wait until slow time to
fix it. One time it went two years before they got to it.
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