Chemical treatment for your boiler(s)

[alfie]

Hi guys.
Just out of curiosity, any of you chemically treat your big hot water boilers for the laundromats. Care to give some detailed instructions to this fellow owner on the East coast? How often do you do this?
My father used to have this "licensed" guy do it for him for years, but the guy went "flaky" on us and thus have not been doing the chemical treatments for a good while.
I know that there are companies out there that provide this service, but it seems like it's something that most of us "handy" guys in this forum should be able to do ourselves. Am I "underestimating" the importance and value of this treatment.
Feel free to comment & thanks for any info.

[mjwalsh]

Originally Posted by alfie

Hi guys.
Just out of curiosity, any of you chemically treat your big hot water boilers for the laundromats. Care to give some detailed instructions to this fellow owner on the East coast? How often do you do this?
My father used to have this "licensed" guy do it for him for years, but the guy went "flaky" on us and thus have not been doing the chemical treatments for a good while.
I know that there are companies out there that provide this service, but it seems like it's something that most of us "handy" guys in this forum should be able to do ourselves. Am I "underestimating" the importance and value of this treatment.
Feel free to comment & thanks for any info.

Alfie,

Are you using "steam" ? We just use hot water (no steam) & the pH of our system was treated so the ph is put in the proper range. It tends to stay in the 8.5-9.5 range & can be checked occasionally with a pH test strip paper. We also had a not so pleasant experience with one of those so called "boiler water treatment" experts many moons ago. The following might help.

http://www.gewater.com/handbook/boil..._preboiler.jsp

We see value for using a water softener; when it comes to extending the life of whatever heats the "domestic" water. That of course, depends on the local hardness of fresh water supply.

mike walsh of bismarck

[Howard]

Originally Posted by mjwalsh

Alfie,

Are you using "steam" ? We just use hot water (no steam) & the pH of our system was treated so the ph is put in the proper range. It tends to stay in the 8.5-9.5 range & can be checked occasionally with a pH test strip paper. We also had a not so pleasant experience with one of those so called "boiler water treatment" experts many moons ago. The following might help.

http://www.gewater.com/handbook/boil..._preboiler.jsp

We see value for using a water softener; when it comes to extending the life of whatever heats the "domestic" water. That of course, depends on the local hardness of fresh water supply.

mike walsh of bismarck

For high pressure boilers this is a must. For small units it is of questionable value. For normal hot water heaters it is probably a waste of money. Same goes for water softeners. Unless you have very hard waters it is probably a waste of money. Hard water is something great to have in a laundromat. Hard water tends to reduce suds, and as we all know customers like to add 7.2 times the amount of detergent that is needed to wash their clothing. Hard water equals less suds and less problems. Yes 7.2X is an exact amount of the overage and your results will not differ.

[Adamski]

Howard,

The ratio of over-sudsing customers in my laundromat is 2.2 per 100 customers and the amount of detergent these over-sudsing customers use is 2x the recommended amount.

[Howard]

Originally Posted by Adamski

Howard,

The ratio of over-sudsing customers in my laundromat is 2.2 per 100 customers and the amount of detergent these over-sudsing customers use is 2x the recommended amount.

But that does not account for the 1 in 372.3 that carefully places three socks in your triple loader and adds 25 pounds of detergent, and then claims your machine lost one of their socks!