RSES Journal Winter 2025, RETA-RSES

The work a technician performs on a commercial boiler establishes that technician as the caretaker of record for that system. It is a large responsibility and one a technician should only accept if properly licensed and insured. How to Approach Preventive Boiler Maintenance

BY RICHARD BRUNO

T he following article will include some recommendations for annual boiler maintenance. But, before I go any further, I want to stress that, when working on any appliance, technicians should be properly licensed and insured. Once a technician has worked on an appli ance, that technician becomes responsi ble for its proper operation and the safety of the inhabitants in the building. More to the point, the last person that touches it, “owns it.” This applies if a person is commissioning a new appliance, perform ing periodic maintenance or when repairing a malfunctioning appliance. When working on any gas heating appli ance, technicians must have a properly cali brated combustion analyzer; an electrical meter that can read, at a minimum, volts, amps and continuity; and a manometer to measure gas pressure. The boilers a technician might be called upon to service will include condensing boilers, some supplying central heating only, some supplying domestic hot water only or combination units supplying both. Types of condensing boilers are fire tube, water tube, and in older homes, cast iron or steel boilers. The older boilers are easier to maintain. They require less service, have less-complicated controls and parts that are usually not proprietary. All of the newer wall-mounted condensing boilers require proprietary parts for servicing needs. When recommending equipment to a client, I recommend that techs suggest a product that has a large local inventory of parts. In

Figure 2 A Laars FT Mascot combina tion boiler.

combustion gases pass over a coil of water in a heat exchanger. Most of these boilers are condensing types and do not require chimneys. Be aware that condensing boil ers produce acidic condensation that must be neutralized before being intro duced into public or private waste disposal systems. I am going to use Laars Mascot 199 heat-only and combination units in my examples. All manufacturers have similar procedures. Familiarize their installation

addition, I strongly recommend that techs become properly trained by the manufac turer of any equipment they sell or service. Most often, technicians will encounter modern fire tube boilers and water heat ers. The concept of these boilers is that hot Figure 1 Diagram of a Laars FT Mascot heating-only boiler.

36 RSES Journal WINTER 2025

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