Filling Boiler

I flushed my whole system this weekend and just used a garden hose with femaled ends on both ends.

Not exactly sure what you are asking, but I have many points to act as a fill or vent depending on what valves I open or close. Also all my floor loops have garden hose connections on the manifolds too.

I had used this: http://www.herchem.com/specs/boilerliq.pdf to try and seal up a couple weeping di-electric fittings. Replaced the gaskets even and back to weeping a few months later.

Anyhow that crap plugged up the flow meters on my manifolds and turned all the water in teh system dark brown/black. When I flushed everything out there was junk that came out that looked like pencil shavings, from that boiler liquid stuff.

I hook a water hose up to the drain on the bottom, and open the drain valve on the bottom of my overhead expansion with another hose from it out the nearby window to let the air out.

EDIT: Actually, that's not right - been a while since I did it. Could do it that way, but instead of hooking up a hose to the drain, I just opened the fill valve that's hooked up to the main water feed (d'uh). The rest about letting the air out is right.

I have a boiler valve in my piping to fill the boiler and a pressure gauge to tell me when I ge to pressure. Never fill with softened water from a salt based softener as that softened water contains salt and is a source of corrosion.

The idea that softened water contains salt is quite a myth. Mythbusters should really do an episode on it!

Softened water will contain sodium in place of the minerals it is removing. It's an exchange. A properly functioning water softener will never allow "salt" into the drinking water.

In fact some folks will tell you that soft water is PREFERRED for hydronic systems because the water will actually be less abrasive for pumping applications when compared to very hard water containing heavy mineral concentrations.

All that being said, I have a water softener and chose to bypass it when filling my system only because I know my water is not "that hard" and I didn't want to waste the salt in my softener to fill my system (1,100 gallons) twice.

I make sure to use soft water. With the hard water I have I was told by two different contractors that the boiler system and water heater would last maybe 5-7 years at best. Sodium isn't going to corrode anything.