I never want to see February 2015 again.........

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heaterman

Minister of Fire
Hearth Supporter
Oct 16, 2007
3,374
Falmouth, Michigan
We are finally getting to the end of the carnage wrought by the extreme weather we had last month. Only one house left that is running on temporary heat and that one will get taken care of next week.

You name it..........if the mechanical equipment running a house or farm around was set to blow up, burn up, freeze up or melt down in some manner, it did during the last couple weeks of February. I don't remember which week it was exactly, the whole month is a blur now, but there was a Thursday night where the temp dropped to -35 to as low as -42* here locally. Friday never made it up to single digits and then the wind started to blow. All Friday night and Saturday we had 10-20mph wind pushing that sub zero temp into places it shouldn't be. From Friday morning through Sunday evening I had 96 phone calls. Just on my cell phone. Plus the office. Plus Andy and Matt. Probably 150 calls in 48 hours. Needless to say wwe couldn't get to everyone.

We had more strange stuff happen than I can begin to tell but a couple were so off the wall I'll probably never see them again. At least I hope I don't..........

Got a call from a large dairy farm that we have 4 boilers running in 2 different facilities about 5:30AM saying all the boilers were running rough. Rumbling and flaming out all the time. I knew it was cold but didn't bother to look at the temp when I got in the car. The little VW TDI cranked right up but it sounded like a rod was going to blow through the oil pan when it started. That's when I noticed the temp was -32*.

The farm sits in a large flat area of land east of me and as I was driving through that lower area I kept watching the temp. It hit -33, then -35 and by the time I pulled up to the farm it was sitting at -38*. About that time I figured out what was going on with the boilers. Took the manometer in with me and stuck it on the test port of one of the boilers...sure enough only a fuzz above 4" w.c. This is LP gas so our manifold pressure should be between 11- 12" w.c.

I told the owner there wasn't a single thing I could do to solve his problem short of building a fire under the LP tank. He was not impressed with the idea so I explained what was going on.
LP basically quits evaporating at -40*. At that temperature it remains liquid and does not vaporize. You can take LP gas at that temp, pour it into a bucket and it will just sit there. Wave a match over the top of it and nothing will happen.
I hope I never see those conditions again in my life.

Another weird one was on a 20+ year old high efficiency furnace. It was a mid 90's vintage York in which the secondary heat exchanger is a series of tubes run through fins, much like the radiator on the car.
Basic start up sequence on a call for heat,......... the draft inducer comes on, safeties prove, power hits the ignitior, the gas valve opens, flame safety proves ignition and away we go. The thing is on these older 90% units, they were operated for the most part by simple mechanical/electrical controls and relays.

So what happened to this old girl was this. Condensate backed up in the secondary due to a plugged drain (lack of maintenance) and the ignition cycle came to a standstill with the draft inducer running. And running. And running.........pulling -30* air through the furnace.
The secondary tubes were partially full of water.
Which froze.
Which in turn split the tubes.
So a simple shut down due to a plugged drain wound up ruining the furnace. Even the condensate collector pan froze and cracked.
One of the crazier things I have ever seen happen.

I know there were a few people from here that were trying to contact me and I wasn't able to get back with you. My apologies. Give me a ring back or send another e-mail and I'll try to answer your questions ASAP.

Thanks
 
Yikes.... -38F, I thought it was cold here with a -31F one morning. I didn't know that about propane at -40F. I wonder what they use in Alaska and northern Canada if they don't have wood heat or natural gas ?

Without a doubt, these brutally cold February's we have had the last 2 years have raised hell with heating and water systems all over the country, especially the upper Midwest and the Northeast. We still have "let run" water orders here in some of the smaller towns. At least this last week has been nice. I'm hoping we've seen the last of the below zero crap for this season.
 
It's one reason to put your propane tank underground. I suppose a clever guy who really wanted to be covered could run a glycol loop out to the propane tank and insulate it so you could get a little heat, and heat the tank enough to get serious heat...but burial is simpler and should work fine in most climates, as it's a heck of a lot warmer underground when it's 40 below up top.

Sun finally got it in gear this week- snowpack has shrunk by half (volume-wise - most of the water is still there, but the air left.)
 
A few water mains burst around here and a fire plug or 2. Anywhere in Michigan all bets are off id be insulating those propane tanks
 
Surprised The dairy farmers wouldn't let you build a fire under the tank. Usually those guys are in the whatever it takes camp.

That's wild on the 90%'er. Weirdest thing I've ever seen on one of those was a pluged secondary due to bad gas from the co-op.
 
I think they make some kind of evaporator unit for LP that brings liquid in side and boils it off there for really cold climates. Never have seen one but I think they are something akin to the evaporators use on vehicles that run on propane and uses hot antifreeze from the engine to vaporize the LP before it enters the carburetor.
 
Yep but as he said - if ya can't get it out of the tank ya can't vaporize it- reason to warm tank -one way or another. the tdi was likely suffering from gelling fuel as well even with the warmed excess fuel being returned to the tank - problem here is again the supply line between the tank and eng. Been down that road.
 
At the plant I worked at we had an inline electric heater on the propane lines coming in the building. Don't know much about it I was a maintenance guy, but on the electrical side. If I remember right I think the line it heated was liquid and came off the bottom of the tanks.
 
They make all kind of electric heating pads, id use an electric option .even a kerosene torpedo heater may not run in those temps.
 
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a lite bulb on the regulator makes'em go ...but running that much LQ/gas/btu thru the lines ,nope.....a weed burner to the tank is next ,seen it many a time, and have yet to hear/read about it going boom.
 
It was up to about -15 by 9AM that day and the gas pressure popped right back up. A few degrees colder and we would have had nothing at all to work with.
Then it would have been time to light a fire under the tank.
 
Growing up we had a fuel oil furnace with a tank outside. We always bought the number two oil and on a few real cold snaps I'd have to run the salamander heater pointed at the tank to keep the fuel from gelling so we had heat. The not so good, good old days.
 
I had problems with our oil tanks here, but few calls due to the cold. A couple of oven no heats due to frozen exhaust fans, some frozen pipes, but nowhere near as bad as last winter. Jan/Feb 2014 was the first real sustained cold we have had in a number of years, and the stuff that was questionable failed then.
 
I just spent $450.00 on a new oil pump for my boiler, the pump seals failed after 12 years, it is a becket burner @ 140 psi, the repair guy that came and fixed it said he did hundreds of these this year alone and orders these pumps by the case, he said the company switched production over sea's about 15 years ago and now he see's a ton a failures. He asked if I run the boiler for heat seeing the wood stove, I said no, I only use the oil boiler for hot water. Either way its just been a rough winter all the way around for many people, between the actual weather, running out of wood, frozen pipes, and now pot holes, muddy driveways, yards and flooding, cant wait for summer
 
Even when ambient temps are warmer you can still cool the lpg tank down to the point of no flow by demanding lots of gas. These things happen at the same time so it is good to know how to recognize it.

I have frozen portable lpg tanks to the muddy ground when using a 500000 btu weedburner to light a slash fire. Turning the weedburner onto that 20# tank sure helped production.
 
I just spent $450.00 on a new oil pump for my boiler, the pump seals failed after 12 years, it is a becket burner @ 140 psi, the repair guy that came and fixed it said he did hundreds of these this year alone and orders these pumps by the case, he said the company switched production over sea's about 15 years ago and now he see's a ton a failures. He asked if I run the boiler for heat seeing the wood stove, I said no, I only use the oil boiler for hot water. Either way its just been a rough winter all the way around for many people, between the actual weather, running out of wood, frozen pipes, and now pot holes, muddy driveways, yards and flooding, cant wait for summer


A lot of pump and seal related failures are due to the higher solvent characteristics of low sulpher fuel oil.
 
Heaterman-

Just curious... when the tanks weren't gassing enough to make the 4 boilers run right.... would cutting one off, and letting 3 run on the rest have worked? Or were the 4, running poorly doing better?

I guess it's just math.. you were only gonna get so many BTUs worth of propane to gas off from that tank. I bet it wouldn't have taken much heat on the tank to get it going better.

Man, that's cold. I was in -40s once. We were in a diesel F350. Just driving on a paved road in canada. A little bump.. a bit later... the truck cut right out.. would hardly idle.
We thought it was gelled fuel. After an hour of the truck barely running.. and one guy going for help in a passing truck to get fuel, and diesel 911.. I spent my time reading the manual. Last straw.. after the 911 didn't clear it up..

Shut the truck off, and reset the crash button on the fuel pump on pax side. Just that little bump had made the switch trip, and cut the fuel pump. Being a big diesel.. it kept sucking just enough to keep it running. COLD! thank god for seat heat. That truck sure did cool down fast!

JP
 
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