Hello...I just started looking into some issues with our boiler and I have some general clarification questions first to make sure I'm making correct sense out of our existing system. I thought I took a decent pic of the overall layout behind the boiler but turns out I didn't, so there's pictures of the different sections. In the pic with the expansion tank, what's the medium-sized turquoise part that's corroded down the side? The small part on top of that is a air float vent if I'm not mistaken, it also heavily corroded. The next pic shows a close-up of the far size of that vent - there's a star-shaped opening. What is that for? There used to be a small cap on top of the black stub that you can see. I was under the impression it could be turned to open/close the vent, so I tried turning it with pliers and it ended up snapping off. Oops. Next pic - blue handle and orange bell shape thing. Blue handle seems to be to control whether new water is allowed into the system or not. Orange bell shape thing seems to be a water pressure reducer or something - I guess it knows when to let more water in based on the water pressure of the system? next pic - drain valve. Final pic - relief valve. Anything off in my assessment of the system parts? Now on to the functional questions: I used the stickied posts in the forum to construct a pressure gauge to verify my boiler's pressure gauge. It checked out to be ok. The relief valve has been dripping water every time the boiler runs for awhile now. It started last winter and has gotten progressively "worse" - meaning it drips more frequently now than it used to. I tried to follow the stickied instructions for checking my expansion tank. I started draining water from my drain valve and the pressure dropped from 11 pounds to about 5, then slowly rose back to 11. Realized then it must have been feeding new water in so I closed down that valve with the blue handle - it was stuck tight at first, and then still fairly hard to turn once I got it unfrozen. Fairly certain i got it closed down all the way but I can't be sure. Drained more water -pressure dropped to 0, but then eventually rose back up again, albeit slower than the first time around. Would you say it's likely that new water was still coming in, either because that blue valve is shot from age, or because I didn't have it closed down tight? I checked for auto air valves on most of my baseboards and didn't see any, only manual ones, so I don't think it was letting air into the system. When I press the valve on the bottom of the expansion tank nothing happens. No water comes out and no air pressure either. The tank feels light when I wiggle it. I put a bicycle pump on the valve and tried to add air and it wouldn't take it. Seems like the valve is completely jammed or gummed up. Minimum work needed at this time (assumed - would like verification!): -Replace expansion tank -Replace air valve sitting above expansion tank -Replace the turquoise color part sitting between the two, whatever it is? Work I'd like to do if it's not going to be too difficult: -Replace the drain valve - it now leaks a bit, even after being tightened back down all the way. It's not awful, but I'd prefer no leak over a small leak. It appears that it would just unscrew out and then screw a new one in, but I'd presumably have to drain the entire system first. How big of a chore is that? More importantly, how difficult to refill the bleed the system? -Replace the corroded valve with the blue handle - that's copper assembly which I'm not familiar with. Any serious safety concerns with doing any of the above? Or things I should be aware of that I might not think of on my own since I haven't done any boiler work before? I saw mention on some other site of breaking the "combustion chamber" - what does that mean, and would that be a concern with replacing any of the parts I've outlined? [attach]108723[/attach] [attach]108724[/attach] [attach]108725[/attach] [attach]108726[/attach] [attach]108727[/attach]

Because we heat with wood, we use this system only for our hot water supply. I know this is not the most efficient system, but any upgrade is out of our budget at the moment. The system has always kept up with our demand for the most part, occasionally running a bit cool in the shower, but by turning down the volume it would catch up and be fine again. However, this has recently gotten worse and worse, to the point where we would get about 2-3 minutes of cold water for every 20-30 seconds of hot. This does not make for a relaxing shower. I thought it was maybe just not burning well so I cleaned the exchangers and changed the nozzle and oil filter. It's better, but still giving that same pattern. I set the diff as low as possible (10?) and have HI at 200, low at 180. Mixing valve is all the way to the max. It seems like there is plenty of hot in the boiler, but for some reason it's not getting to the domestic mix side consistently. I say that because the boiler temp is well over 200 and the relief valve spitting steam, yet the hot water is running cool again. Is my coil going bad? Is something restricting flow through it? Is it something in the controller box? Help please! Thanks! Jake in VT