I just found a puddle of water on the floor by my unpressurized storage tank. When I opened the access hatch I could see the tank was overflowing. There is obviously a leak in either the hot water heat exchange coil or in the boiler heat exchange coil.
Here’s the background: The system is two years old, just entering the third heating season. The boiler is a TARM Excel 2000. I made the coils my self out of ¾ inch refrigeration tubing, two coils 150’ each. I saw someone else using that and I knew that heating pipes usually use the thinner wall stuff anyway.
I haven’t located the leak yet. I pumped down the tank 6” and will wait to see how fast it comes up again. I’m thinking it must be a pretty small leak and it didn’t overflow until I fired the boiler Sunday morning started to raise the tank temp. I use the system for my DHW all year long, so I was firing it once every 5 days or so in the summer and increasing to every night the past 3-4 weeks. Of course this couldn’t happen in August.
I think step one will be to call TARM tomorrow and find out how to jumper my controls to run with out storage, I have ball valves on the supply and return to the storage tank so I should be able to cut it out of the system. Step two will be to borrow an electric hot water tank from a friend and bypass the hot water heat exchanger.
Now I will be able to pump down the storage tank and see what is leaking.
I see two possibilities either the pipe itself has developed a pinhole leak or one of my joints is leaking. Now my water is acidic and I have had problems with my domestic pipes leaking but that was after years and never in the heating system even before I switched to wood. I did adjust the ph of the tank when I filled it to about 7.
If it’s in the pipe I can’t see just patching it and waiting for another leak to develop. I hate to redo the coils though, and if I use type K it’s going to run me $1200 for the tubing.
I’ll post updates as I find this out. And of course I’ll use this group as a sounding board and for advice. Thank God for the Hearth board.
Here’s the background: The system is two years old, just entering the third heating season. The boiler is a TARM Excel 2000. I made the coils my self out of ¾ inch refrigeration tubing, two coils 150’ each. I saw someone else using that and I knew that heating pipes usually use the thinner wall stuff anyway.
I haven’t located the leak yet. I pumped down the tank 6” and will wait to see how fast it comes up again. I’m thinking it must be a pretty small leak and it didn’t overflow until I fired the boiler Sunday morning started to raise the tank temp. I use the system for my DHW all year long, so I was firing it once every 5 days or so in the summer and increasing to every night the past 3-4 weeks. Of course this couldn’t happen in August.
I think step one will be to call TARM tomorrow and find out how to jumper my controls to run with out storage, I have ball valves on the supply and return to the storage tank so I should be able to cut it out of the system. Step two will be to borrow an electric hot water tank from a friend and bypass the hot water heat exchanger.
Now I will be able to pump down the storage tank and see what is leaking.
I see two possibilities either the pipe itself has developed a pinhole leak or one of my joints is leaking. Now my water is acidic and I have had problems with my domestic pipes leaking but that was after years and never in the heating system even before I switched to wood. I did adjust the ph of the tank when I filled it to about 7.
If it’s in the pipe I can’t see just patching it and waiting for another leak to develop. I hate to redo the coils though, and if I use type K it’s going to run me $1200 for the tubing.
I’ll post updates as I find this out. And of course I’ll use this group as a sounding board and for advice. Thank God for the Hearth board.