What caused this on heat exchanger on peerless hydronic boiler?
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tkel
New Member
Gas
It's most likely to be soot build-up. The fact that it's just one of the channels is probably an indication that one of the strip-burners didn't have the proper air/fuel mix ratio.
Is that a top view, bottom view, or side view?
Is that a top view, bottom view, or side view?
tkel
New Member
The view is looking up from the bottom of the boiler. I removed one of the burner tubes and put the camera/phone under. The black area is toward the front a little to the right of center and above the pilot. The burner tubes were dusty but no soot on them.
The soot would never be on the tubes themselves, since the flame stands above them, and the draft goes up. The first surface the soot particle hits is the heat exchanger.
When it's that sooted up it's worth cleaning it out, and it's far from the worst-case possible. If you can get a stiff bottle-brush to snake up in there you can usually get it clean enough- be sure to run a vacuum cleaner while you're doing it. You my have to pick at it with a sharper tool to get it started if the surface is getting hard-glazed. Here's a video of somebody cleaning the soot out of a similar boiler.
Clean up all the burner tubes, and any obvious corrosion on the gas jets, then inspect for soot annually to see if this is a chronic mixture problem or if it was a one-off set of conditions that got it going.
When it's that sooted up it's worth cleaning it out, and it's far from the worst-case possible. If you can get a stiff bottle-brush to snake up in there you can usually get it clean enough- be sure to run a vacuum cleaner while you're doing it. You my have to pick at it with a sharper tool to get it started if the surface is getting hard-glazed. Here's a video of somebody cleaning the soot out of a similar boiler.
Clean up all the burner tubes, and any obvious corrosion on the gas jets, then inspect for soot annually to see if this is a chronic mixture problem or if it was a one-off set of conditions that got it going.
