We woke up this morning to the sound of a babbling brook! It sounded like a faucet was left on. Four radiators on the upper floor had water gushing out of the steam valves. Our boiler has an automatic feed on the water line and apparently it was stuck in the open position and filled the steam pipes with water. I don't know why this happened or how long it took to fill the pipes. I shut the boiler off. I drained the pipes by connecting a garden hose to the pipe drain valve and running it out the basement window.

I don't know what to do now. I'm afraid to turn the boiler on but in the meantime we have no heat or hot water.

We ran out of oil last week and my wife thinks she pressed the manual override on the feed in an effort to get the boiler started again. Maybe the button was stuck? Could it have taken a whole week to fill those pipes?

I'll be grateful for any help. Thanks.

Tim

 

It is not likely that the button on the feeder stuck but it is possible. It would fill in a couple of hours not a week no matter what kind of feeder you have. As for why it happened, that also depends on th ebrand and model of water feeder. Hopefully, since 12 hours has gone by since your post, you took enough water out to get the level in the sight glass and restarted the boiler. Everything should be fine if you keep the feed valve closed and monitor the level carefully for a few days. It may pay to have a professional look at the feeder and low water cutoff.

Ken

 

We had our boiler guy in. He said the same thing you did about the button. It turned out the low water sensor (not sure if I'm using the correct terminology) malfunctioned and it basically kept telling the automatic feed that the water was low. (The "float" was stuck in the down position).

He replaced the part and we're up and running. Unfortunately we have some water damage.

Thanks for your reply Ken.

Tim