Older wood/oil Tarm slow leak

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peakbagger

Minister of Fire
Jul 11, 2008
8,845
Northern NH
A friend of mine has a 30 year old wood/oil Tarm that was installed in a house he bought and is now try to sell. The boiler tech has informed him that the boiler has a leak and is near the end of its service life. I have suggested a few things to check and suggested that it may be time for "stop leak" to buy some time. It sounds like its a cast iron sectional boiler with leak between the sections and the tie rods are so far gone that they cant even attempt to tighten it.

Anyone out there have any experience with these older units and is this a typical end to them?
 
There is a 30 yr old brand new tarm for sale in Exeter NH.
 
these are steel boilers and often end up leaking around one or more pressure stays. This will show up as a water leak INTO the wood firebox. If you find such a leak, it may be able to be welded, but chances are good that the rest of the firebox walls are quite thin so, while this may buy some time, it is the beginning of the end for the boiler. If you do not find a leak like that, look for leaks around fitting or the domestic coil dome (depending on the boiler type). These can often be fixed. I recommend that you do NOT put Stop Leak into the heating system.
 
Ditto on the Stop Leak. No sense in ruining the rest of the system components also.
 
You guys would likely know better than me, but I have had no issues since adding one bottle of the Gunk magic juice to my system a couple or few months after I got it up & running. Stopped the 2 or 3 niggling drips I had almost immediately and everything is still working as it did before. One bottle in 700 gallons is a pretty weak mix though.

(And knock on wood to everything I just said...)
 
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