Case of why the boiler failed

A twenty six year old boiler failed in the middle of winter. I was asked to figure out the reason. Come along on the service call and see if you agree with my thoughts about the cause.

[@BigMouth380cal]

As a young pipefitter, I had the pleasure of working with an old Master Fitter who excelled at replacing the Push Nipples between sectional boilers. Building the boiler back up and carefully tuning the connecting rods so as to allow for expansion was his specialty. And while it was labor intensive, and rarely done today, it was the way things were done back then. A quick little side story with the same Master. We enter a basement to work on an H.B. Smith boiler and as this cellar had no suitable drain we had to drain the boiler into a pail and carry the pail up and out the bulkhead to dump outside. My mentor looked at this boiler and told me to take the first 17 pails outside and then he would take the next 17. I never even considered that he knew exactly how much water this boiler would hold, and sure enough, the 17th pail only filled about half-way. And he was ready to begin working on the return piping.

[@Joop5000]

As a young 19 year old I worked with my Dad, he was a plumber and his friend is a boiler guy and oil burner tech. Well, his friend needed someone to help him on a job and he asked my dad if he could borrow me for the day to help him on a job and of course he obliged. On this job was exactly the same, we put the boiler sections together in the basement and then piped and wired everything etc. Back in those days the boilers didn't come as packaged boilers, we had to put the whole thing together. Well, I liked doing the boiler / oil / gas burner work much more and my dads friend a few days later wanted to borrow me again and he did and I was eager to go on another boiler job. This happened half a dozen times or so and I told my dad that I was going to go work for his friend. My dad had no problem with it because he had my brother working for him too. I ended up working for his friend for the next 15 years or so and got my masters license. Now it's all package boilers unless it's commercial jobs and we did plenty of schools and churches etc over the years back then.

[@boilerroomdetective]

I loved that story push nipples are a thing of the past You needed your good back to do those

[@boilerroomdetective]

Boilers get in your blood!