well today on the boiling point we're going to talk about daily maintenance on your boiler room welcome to the boiling point we're here with 36 year veteran Michael Taylor Michael's actually in our safety department and heads all to the safety department of where but more importantly he's last word technically in the business so 36 years in the business got a lot of knowledge and so really I can't believe I haven't had you on the the boiling point yet so glad that you're finally with us here hey what we're talking about today's we're going to talk a little bit about daily maintenance of the boiler and taking care of the boiler and we thought we'd go through a checklist of things that you could do on a daily basis so Michael the first thing I believe that we would do is look a little bit about the blow downs yeah the the biggest point is to the main blowdown to get all the solids out of the boiler that's accumulated in there okay how those solids actually get to the bottom blowdown and they're they're heavier than the water so they're going to fall to the bottom the chemical in the boiler actually keeps it from attaching to the tubes and the other materials so they can't drop and you can blow them out okay so this is a daily thing that should be done once you go through that process real quick for us okay I main blowdown you you're going to have a quick opening and a slow opening on most boilers you always open the quick opening first it's just a backup you don't want to open it last you want to open the slope make sure that you don't stress the pipes and stuff and blow them off so you open the valve up all the way and depending on how long your chemical guide tells you to blow it then you close it back down typically it's going to be a ten-second blow okay and then shut your secondary valve back off all right we've moved to the front of the boiler now we're going to be doing the water columns Michael first of all what is the water column for it's to control the level of the water in the boiler and to prevent the blower from going out on low water so it it has switches in it that will shut the burner off if the water gets too low okay so what are we going to do going to daily maintenance on this well this you have settlement will settle in this bowl just like it does in the bottom the boiler so if you let it too much build in there then the float or the probes in this case will not they take a little water conditions so you have to blow that column down to blow all that sediment out and on on this one it's a probe so it doesn't matter how quickly you do it but if you've got a a float in there you have to do it very slowly or you'll collapse your float so you simply open the valve up all the way the time you get it open it's blown out so then you close it back down okay so it's not a ten second here no just open up and close it back down okay and when you do that the boiler the burner should shut down because it's going to drop the water off that switch if it doesn't shut down there's something wrong you need to shut it down and see what's wrong with it well having data is always important and this next thing that we're going to do is something that's also important tell us a little bit about the boiler pressure plea depending on your process you're going to have a certain set point on your boiler pressure and the ball it's going to fluctuate some depending on your load so you always want to check your your pressure when you add a steady load right not when it's you've got a big load surge or it's back way off whenever it's a steady load and check to make sure that your bores maintaining the pressure is this something that you would actually write down daily sure you should have a daily log book that you would write that down a lot of places they'll record that every hour and what would you use that information for just to see what your load is being on your board to make sure that your boiler is big enough and also to make sure that if your load hasn't changed that your boards working properly well we've moved back to the back of the boiler again and the stack seems to be something that is really really important to understand once you tell us a little about the stack well the stack will in stack temperature will tell you what's going on inside the boiler because scale is a great insulator soot is a great insulator either one of them is going to cut down the efficiency and allow more heat to go out your stack okay so if you check your stack temperature daily the stack temperature should always be from 1,500 degrees above your steam temperature okay so if you've got 325 degrees steam temperature 225 psi then your stocks going be between 375 and 425 if it gets out of that it starts rising you know something is going haywire inside the board okay and typically when that stock temperature is going up a lot of times it is a suet problem and maybe a scaling problem something like it's going to be one of the other either acid or scaling and either one makes it well really inefficient because you're sending more heat out instead of transferring it to your 16 okay all right well we've moved to the fuel side of things and what do we do with gas here Mike well you got your gas very buddy which is regulating your gas going to the burner so it's real important that you check to make sure that your you got a good gas supply to it and that your regulator is working with the gauge after the regulator if it stops working then you guess what you should check it but it's a good daily load to load those pressures to make sure everything is supposed to be okay now that's gas now what about oil with oil you have a an old filter and you have a back engage between the pump and the filter and that backing gates will tell you that the filter is getting stuck when those filters getting stopped up okay so as the gauge rises in vacuum you know to need to change your filter out okay so no fuel probably hard for the burner to work yes very hard well we come back to the back of the boiler again and we're actually going to look into the site board for looking at the flame I remember as a little kid I'd be hanging out with my dad not always going to the boiler room and I always felt like a big boiler man because I could look into the site port so I still don't know what I'm looking at Mike so why don't you tell us a little bit about what what are we looking for in here well we're looking for to make sure that the flame stays like it always is every boiler is different but you'll get used to what the flame looks like so then when something goes how you are like the diffuser or something on the burner head you'll know it because you've been looking in there every day you say hey something changed so then you'll know to call somebody or to check into something and you also look and see if you're building up clinkers or anything because you can see the Morrison to when you're looking there with the flame in it you can see all that area so you can see if something is building up in there and causing a problem okay what why don't you explain flame impingement what that flame impingement means that you've your flame is actually instead of going straight down the tube it's varying to one side or up or down and really hitting on the metal hard and then it won't allow it to burn so it'll start building up carbon which is unburnt fuel and what we call in the boy industry it's a Deadman and and it'll it can get pretty big in there and actually start closing off the area so in the mold that grows the more engagement you have so the worse it gets okay so something really important that this needs to become something that you're just very familiar with your flame it's just understanding it it's just nice and it's just as gaudy no just look through that every day or several times a day and you get accustomed to what it's supposed to look like and soon as something changes you know it right off the bat because you're used to see it well obviously the boiler is something that's important and we should really look at but man there's a lot of support equipment that goes with a boiler so why don't we talk a little bit about the next step and that is some of the support equipment okay you got the feed tank or da tank depending on your application here we have a regular condensate tank and we've got a chemical pump here that's feeding chemical into the system you always check that everyday to make sure that one you've got a ample amount of chemical and that you haven't got any leaks and the pump is actually pumping okay then on top of that you have a this tank is also heated you heat the water up so that the bore doesn't have to work so hard so that you don't shock the boiler so there's temperature gauge on here and a heater that speed steam into the tank so you always want to check that to make sure your here is working probably you're not shocking damaging your bowler from cold water right okay then you can have water softeners and other chemical feed tanks you have to check the salt every day to make sure to Gus salt in your softeners to make sure all those things are working properly like the supposed to be okay so real important to just check the salt levels right salt is what cleans the salt and round so they can do this job okay alright well now we're going into water quality which we know is something that's extremely important and a lot of folks really don't take care of so you know talking a little bit about the water quality and actually how we even know that the quality is good what do we what do we do well it takes samples every day to make sure that that your water coming in is good and that what you're doing with your chemical and your blowdown is working for them so first you take a sample of your of your makeup water with its soft water city water or what it is to see that it's maintaining where you thought it was so that you know what that your chemical program is going to work okay because your chemical program is set up depending on what this water is which is different in every area because of the hardness of the water because the hardness of water whether you're on a softer or you're on deionized water what kind of water supply you have okay then you're going to have to take a sample of your tank to see because you've got time state coming back which is distilled water so you don't have any solids in it but you're making up water so you've got a mixture so you have to take a sample back down here to see what your water is see how much chemical you need to add okay alright and then you take a sample of your boiler water so you can take it you'll have a sample port set up on the ball or someplace this one is on the site glass you would take it right after you did your bro-down that way you've got fresh water in it so you can take your sample to see if your chemical program is working in the board and your blowdown program is or properly okay right well if you want to learn a little bit more about the water softeners you can click or rate here and we actually did a boiling point on the water softeners and actually how they work so make sure you check those out I believe that's it we've covered all the daily maintenance this is something that we're going to be back each every other week and we're going to be talking about more than room maintenance from a daily basis from a weekly basis you know from some annual type things that you need to do so tune in next time Mike appreciate you hanging out with us and we'll see you next time on the boiling point we appreciate Mike stopping by and talking to us a little bit about the daily boiler maintenance you know boiler equipment failures they can be dangerous and they typically result in lost productivity and revenue scaling a boiler on the water side will cause overheating and those result in boiler failure when this occurs sometimes there can be catastrophic failures that result in a water side or fire side explosions this has more serious consequence as including actually injuries or maybe even death and possible facility damage with the right preventative maintenance plan these issues can be avoided or greatly reduced we appreciate you stopping by make sure you like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and if you don't mind subscribe to the YouTube channel and if you love our videos please share them and we'll see you next time on the boiling point
