Garn Leaking water again.

[hedge wood]

Just a quick up date. Today is the three anniversary since I started the Garn back up after the last leak repair. We had another pretty mild winter other than two week in January. Burned about 10 cords again last year and plan on burning threw the summer again for domestic hot water. I hope everyone has a enjoyable and safe summer.

 

[cumminstinkerer]

Good luck Martin, I let my boiler go out over the weekend, since we were up at the in-laws and my folks went down to my sisters, now big deal there, still had decent hot water yesterday afternoon, just not as scorching as my wife likes for her bath, she had to settle for a shower, I fired it up again last night about 630, storage was at 117, by 10 when I went to bed it was up to 150, I was pretty happy with that!

 

[hedge wood]

Every thing with the Garn had been good until today. Have folks coming in from out of state to stay with us so I thought I better fire the Garn up and bring the temp in the tank up so I had plenty of domestic hot water. Opened the door on the Garn barn to find water on the floor. It is leaking out the air intake pipe in the back. I will let the temp pull down some more and then pump the water out of it and try to figure out what weld failed this time. Hope its fixable. Didn't need to have issues with it. Better now than in the middle of winter.

 

[hedge wood]

Time for a update and time to close this thread out. Drained the Garn , dried it out and scraped it down real good and vacuum it out. Cut a inspection hole in the left side of the Garn to get a good look at the fire box on that side. Opened the air collar by the loading door up to inspect that area. The Garn has a lot of issues. The welding on the air collar is all broken loose. The blower box needs more plating put on it. The whole front needs to be cut off and lots of new metal put it. Will start next week to remove it from the Garn barn. Most of the enclosure its in will have to come down to remove it. I am probably not going to try to rebuild it and install it again. Cost of a proper rebuild of it will be too much and not doing a complete rebuild would be like the last two repairs. It will be fine till you have another leak in another area. I installed it in the summer of 2009 and started it up in Nov 09 and had two major repairs to get to July 2024. I have thirty grand in the whole system and now its time to do something else for heat. Back running my twenty one year old direct vent propane water heater for my domestic water. Wish I would have bought that Switzer boiler back in 2009.

 

[mirabelorion]

I first want to start off by thanking Cumminstinkerer for offering himself and his buddy to drive three hours over to my place and try a temp weld. My temporary fix failed in FEB and flooded the Garn barn one night. We were in that sub zero time frame so I just drained it out completely and went over to propane and electric. Put a electric milk house heater in the Garn barn to keep pumps and heat exchanger's from freezing. Got unlucky and had to buy some $2.50 a gallon propane. It finally warmed up and welder came to look at it. One of the welds on the blower box had failed. He put me on his schedule and got here last Tue. He did over lay the top of the box were the weld failed he felt it needed it to make a better connection to the front of the tank. He also welded the box out side as well. All in all he was here about four hours and the bill for the materials and labor was six hundred dollars. I felt that was very cheap. I was planning on a thousand. My cleaning guy came out Sat and cleaned it. I filled it Sat night no leaks. Burned three loads Sun to get to temp. Got pumps back going and heating house a little and domestic water again. Planning of putting cleaning chemicals in Wed and draining Fri afternoon and cleaning guy coming Fri evening to power wash again and then I will fill Friday night and put the twelve gallon of chemical in and run it a few weeks watch my filter and send a sample to the water guy and see were we are out. Chemical guy did feel sorry for me so he gave me a discount on the chemicals. I am at about fifteen hundred dollars on this leak not counting my time or the cleaning guys time or the eight hundred dollars of power and propane I used to get to spring Burgers at McDonald's Menu.

The water leaks where the rubber hose connects with the metal end. I tried inserting a rubber patch and then also tried tieing a tape and a clothe, but they are temporary fix and it starts leaking again. Is there a way to cut the hose about 5 inches at the end and re-join a new or existing metal end. The hose is fine otherwise, no cuts or leaks and it is long enough to suit my purposes. I use the hose with sprinkler to water the grass and with a shower for plants, so I use the metal end a lot.