37.3F and clear @ 08:00 ...
Mike and I went into town and did the blow out on the boiler system yesterday, which pretty much turned into an all day project ... due to a variety of reasons.
I had contacted my young neighbor about getting my 170T Reddy torpedo heater back on Friday. The first text message I sent didn't get a reply ... sent another one about an hour later and said hey I NEED this thing tomorrow. That got a reply, sorry he had just got off work. We agreed that I would swing by Saturday morning and pick it up. Saturday morning around 08:00 I send him a text message saying I'll be over in about 1/2 hour to pick it up. No reply.
So I head over there in about a half hour and knock on their back door and Grandma comes to the door and I ask for the kid.
He's not here ... he's out with friends ... (probably has been out all night
)
WTH ?
So I tell her what I'm there for.
Oh ... lemme go get Grandpa.
A few minutes later he shows up ... looks like I got him out of bed.
So we head up to the polebarn and dig the heater out, throw it in the Gator, and haul it down to the van.
I swing by and pick up Mike and we head into town, stopping for 5 gallons of diesel for the heater along the way. Heater ended up firing right up and running ... raised the temp first floor room in the building from 45F to 60F. Pretty amazing, given that it has had no maintenance in the ten years since I bought it.
First issue that comes up is that I notice that while I have left (one of) my propane torches in at that the store, I apparently grabbed the case for it - which had the wire brushes, flux paste, and solder in it - and had taken it home at some point. Back into the van and drive 4 miles to Home Depot for solder, paste, and some coarse steel wool. $20 ...
Get back to the building, get the supply line cut, solder tee with pressure gauge soldered in, air and drain hoses connected up. Go to start draining the system and open the drain cock on the older boiler ... Mike doesn't think it's going to open. He ends up being partially right - he's able to free the handle and screw it all the way open ... but ain't nothing coming out ... it's plugged with crud. Another trip to Home Depot for a new drain cock. Another $10.
Get that installed and finally can start trying to drain it. But in order to do that we have to figure out the right combination of valves to close/open.
There's at least 8 large (1 1/4") gate valves installed in the piping and due to way it was plumbed (gate valves installed behind the boilers, several just off the floor), only 3 are easily reachable. Which means that I have to climb over boilers and all the piping that runs over top of them (6' or 7' in the air), into a space behind the one boiler, which is about 18" x 36" ... and has a 1 1/4" copper pipe running right through the middle of it.
Mike says he doesn't see how I'm going to get in there, and if I do, I'll never be able to get back out. I manage it somehow.
Another 10 or 15 minutes to free up all the valves, many of which probably haven't been turned in years and are frozen.
Then it's a matter of spending some time figuring out the plumbing scheme, and which valves should be open or closed, and the sequence in which they should be manipulated to isolate the three zones.
I think we managed to get all of it pretty much blown out ... in the case of the upstairs circuit that was literally true - we popped a line, which then leaked all over the upstairs floor (black nasty water) and, of course, found a crack in the upstairs concrete floor.
Mike discovered this when he noticed water leaking out of the first floor ceiling :laughing:
We knocked off around 16:00 - 16:30 and called it a day. The woman and I will probably head back in there today and give it another shot, since I still have hours left on the compressor. Also need to pull the reliefs on the boilers and dump some RV anti-freeze in.
Might give getting the grass mowed a shot as well.
